La ville blanche 1953

Corneille painted ‘La Ville Blanche’ using oil on canvas with a palette of mainly white, grey, and pink with touches of blue and black. There’s a real sense of playful abstraction here, and I love how the city emerges from a series of intuitive marks and gestures. The buildings are suggested with thick, juicy strokes of paint, almost like frosting, while the river running through the scene is rendered with a dark, sinuous line. Look at the top left corner where the blue circle hangs like a moon, it’s contained but rough around the edges, not quite controlled. You can see this tension between control and looseness throughout the whole painting. Corneille, like his contemporary Karel Appel, was associated with the Cobra group, which was known for its spontaneous, childlike approach to artmaking. This painting really embodies that spirit, embracing the messy, unpredictable nature of paint itself. It’s like the city is constantly being built and unbuilt right before our eyes.