Female Model 1930

Vilhelm Lundstrom painted this female model on canvas, and it's like he’s building form through a process of reduction. The color palette is limited, yet the simple form is evocative. The paint is applied smoothly, almost uniformly. The way he models the light gives the figure a sculptural quality. The planes of the face and body are defined by subtle shifts in tone, particularly the gradient on her upper arm, like a simplified version of classical chiaroscuro. What I find interesting is the way the artist has chosen to represent the eyes as blank, shadowed hollows beneath the brow line, yet the form of the nose is rendered in clear detail. The painting exists in the tension between flatness and depth, abstraction and figuration. Lundstrom reminds me a little of someone like Giorgio Morandi, in the way he sought to express a sense of harmonious simplicity by reducing forms to their essential qualities. Like Morandi, Lundstrom invites us to look closely at the quiet nuances of tone and form.