Le canal bethune 1939

Alekos Kontopoulos made this landscape of Le canal Bethune with oil on canvas, and it feels like the painting happened quickly, intuitively. He’s using a muted palette, lots of grays and browns, but then punctuated by this vibrant green field. Looking closely, the surface has a kind of crustiness. You can see the direction of his brushstrokes, how he’s layered the paint to create texture. The branches of the trees are so tangled, with this dark, brooding mass behind them. It’s not about precision, it's about feeling the weight of the atmosphere. See how the light catches the edges of the field, that slash of green? It’s like a jolt of energy, a counterpoint to all the darkness. It makes me think of other artists who worked with landscape in a similarly emotional way, like Emil Nolde, who used intense color to express inner states. Kontopoulos is doing something similar here, using paint to capture a mood, a feeling of being in a particular place at a particular moment.