Jean Metzinger Catalogue Raisonné
Number: AM-45-016 Jean Metzinger
Date: 1945-50
Title: Nu Allongé (Reclining Nude)
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 73 x 100 cm
Inscriptions: Signed (lower left)
Provenance: Bernheim Jeune, Paris.
Sotheby & Co., London, 30 June 1966, lot 176.
Laurin-Guilloux-Buffeted, Palais Galliera, Paris, 19 June 1974, lot 175
Main Street Gallery, Chicago.
Sotheby Parke-Bernet Inc., New York, 21 May 1982, Lot 338 (as circa 1954-56)
Charles Dutoit, Montreal, Canada
Exhibitions: Bernheim-Jeune, Le Nu à travers les âges, Paris, May-June 1954
Notes: A glass plate negative photograph of this work is housed in Marc Vaux, Archives et documentation Centre Pompidou.
Nu Allongé and other works from the same period are the result of the confluence of many factors. Though simplified in appearance their effective use of symmetry is complex, and highly dependent on the skills and intuition of the artist who needed to weave and combine such factors within his own creative work. Along with texture, color, proportion and other factors, symmetry was for Metzinger a powerful ingredient in such a synthesis; and the principles of Cubism (mostly his own) were the primary means of delivering its content. (A. Mittelmann, 2012)