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Lot Essay
The present work, painted just two years before Villon's death in 1963, represents the culmination of a career which was ultimately focused on the depiction of his own brand of Cubism. The title, loosely translated as "The Conquest of Air," represents a survey of aeronautical motifs. Propellers and abstracted visions of airplanes oscillate across the canvas, creating a sense of dynamism and carefully configured ambiguity. Villon had served as a camouflage artist during World War I, memories of which perhaps serve to illuminate both the subject matter and the carefully constructed coloristic scheme of the present work. Various motifs and hues float seamlessly into one another, providing the viewer with an optical feast of images.
The present painting may be compared to another canvas depicting similar subject matter by Robert Delaunay, a painter who shared with Villon the desire to experiment on the fringes of Cubism but never fully ascribed to its complete deconstruction of the picture plane. In his Hommage à Blériot of 1914 (Kunstmuseum, Basel), Delaunay paid tribute to the first pilot to successfully cross the English Channel by air. Among the abstract circular forms can be recognized the Eiffel Tower with a plane flying overhead. A more symbolic representation of an airplane appears at the upper left of the composition, and in the lower left corner are the clearly rendered propeller and wheels of a machine at rest. Villon's canvas, painted 47 years later, possesses the same dynamism and intensity, a hymn to light, color, and modern life.
The present painting may be compared to another canvas depicting similar subject matter by Robert Delaunay, a painter who shared with Villon the desire to experiment on the fringes of Cubism but never fully ascribed to its complete deconstruction of the picture plane. In his Hommage à Blériot of 1914 (Kunstmuseum, Basel), Delaunay paid tribute to the first pilot to successfully cross the English Channel by air. Among the abstract circular forms can be recognized the Eiffel Tower with a plane flying overhead. A more symbolic representation of an airplane appears at the upper left of the composition, and in the lower left corner are the clearly rendered propeller and wheels of a machine at rest. Villon's canvas, painted 47 years later, possesses the same dynamism and intensity, a hymn to light, color, and modern life.