Naked women's dance 1973

Endre Bartos made this painting, titled "Naked women's dance," with oil on canvas, and, wow, what a scene! It's like a dream, isn't it? A scene of bodies in motion, rendered with such vibrant color. The paint is applied with confident, visible brushstrokes, thick in some areas and thinner in others, allowing the blue ground to peek through. The orange figure that stoops forward, for example, has these long, almost cartoonish limbs, outlined in black, while the surrounding colours look like a flurry of pure energetic marks. Looking at the red mass on the right, is it a tree? A figure? It doesn't matter. Bartos is really playing with the idea of art as a visual language, full of movement, full of feeling, full of freedom. You can almost see the influence of Matisse and Derain in this piece, their shared commitment to Fauvism’s bold use of colour and simplified forms. Like them, Bartos isn't afraid to let the paint speak for itself. It's a real conversation, this painting, and we're lucky to be a part of it.