Sitting nude 1909

Albert Gleizes made this painting, Sitting Nude, with oils. The painting is all about structure, with ochre and warm greens meeting cooler blues and reds. I feel for the artist, puzzling through how to show a body in space! I can imagine them squinting at the model, head cocked to one side, brush hovering, trying to make sense of what they see. See how the shapes are broken down into planes? It's like Gleizes is trying to understand the form of the model through geometry, a kind of intellectual dissection. The paint looks kind of thin, scrubbed in, giving it a matte, chalky surface. The whole painting feels like a question, a search for something solid and lasting in a world that’s always changing. And that search—that process—is what makes the painting so alive, and so very human. It reminds me of the ongoing conversation between painters across time, always riffing off each other's ideas, pushing the boundaries of what painting can be.