Femmes cousant 1913

Albert Gleizes made this painting, Femmes cousant, using a range of muted tones with the odd flash of brick red and sky blue, creating a feeling of stillness despite the fracturing of forms. The painting feels like a construction site, or like looking at a scene through a shattered window; it’s about seeing and the work that goes into seeing. Look at how Gleizes builds up the surface with these small, angular brushstrokes. There’s a real materiality to the paint, it’s not trying to hide itself, it is rough and honest. See the way the composition is organized around geometric shapes. These shapes seem to come together to make up the figures, but they also pull apart again. There’s this tension between fragmentation and wholeness, which I think is so compelling. It makes me think of Picasso, but there's also a bit of Cezanne in there, in the way he's breaking down the picture plane, always playing with multiple perspectives, trying to capture the world not as a static image, but as an ever changing sensation.