Femme sur Divan 1942

Oscar Dominguez made "Femme sur Divan" with oil paint, and he really dove head-first into cubism. He used a limited palette, mostly earth tones, which gives the painting a kind of grounded feeling, despite its angular, geometric forms. Look at how Dominguez plays with the idea of representation. The woman’s body is fragmented into geometric shapes, almost like he's dissecting her form and reassembling it in a new way. The lines slice across the body, defining planes and edges, like a cut-up collage of visual information. The flatness of the paint emphasizes the surface of the canvas and he’s not trying to fool us into thinking we're looking at a real scene. Dominguez feels like a surrealist, like Picabia, but with a warmer palette, maybe because he painted in the Canaries. Both of their works encourage us to think about how we see and perceive the world. This piece reminds us that art doesn't have to be about perfect representation, but about exploring the possibilities of the medium.