Nu au divan

Notes: Metzinger’s reclining nude of 1907-08 represents a move towards a radical geometrization of form, along with a reduction or limitation of the color palette. Contrasting the sharp angular edges that delineate light and shadow, background and foreground, are an array of straight lines and arcs that compose drapery, verdures and various parts of the model. Her face is exotic, mask-like, Gauguinesque, strikingly unusual or strange in effect and appearance. Though she and her setting share common attributes with the work of the former Fauves, she is unlike the work of any of his compatriots. Forming part of Metzinger’s unique trajectory issue from the chromatic versification of his earlier depictions, she is an emissary of her time, an intermediary, but also a messenger, a Jean messenger if you will, flanked between two stages in the history of art, a stage on which Metzinger is a major protagonist.