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拍品專文
Imbued with a rich internal balance, La Source: Femme au broc is a pivotal work within Amédée Ozenfant’s oeuvre, created during an important moment of development and transition in his signature painterly style. Ozenfant had emerged as a pioneering artistic voice in the aftermath of the First World War—believing that a new art was needed in response to what he saw as the growing excess of Cubism, he championed the rappel à l’ordre (“return to order”) in painting, advocating for a rigorous, precise, pure art attuned to the science and industry that permeated modern life. His explorations into this topic were boosted by his friendship with a young Swiss artist and architect by the name of Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, later known as Le Corbusier. The pair met in 1918 and within a year they had formulated a manifesto—Après le Cubsime—in which they boldly declared the end of Cubism and heralded the arrival of a new, dynamic style in its place, known as Purism. Through the early years of the 1920s, Ozenfant and Le Corbusier published the avant-garde journal L’Esprit Nouveau together, both contributing texts under various pseudonyms that emphasized rationality, logic and refinement as the central pillars of this new form of painting, concepts that proved highly influential among their artistic contemporaries.
By the mid-1920s, however, the collaboration between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier had begun to wane as their views on the direction and application of Purism diverged. Le Corbusier became increasingly focused on his architectural practice, while Ozenfant’s broad network of contacts among the European avant-garde—including artists and poets such as Jean (Hans) Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst, Piet Mondrian, Tristan Tzara, and Theo van Doesburg—expanded his artistic outlook, encouraging him to work in intriguing new directions as he absorbed and assimilated the ideas of his colleagues. He was particularly close to Fernand Léger during these years and joined the faculty of the artist’s Académie Moderne in 1924, while his style began to lose some of its austere rigor as he began to deal with a wider variety of subjects. At the same time, Ozenfant became increasingly interested in reviving the art of large-scale mural painting through the Purist aesthetic, and the enormous bay windows at his new, purpose-built studio on avenue Reille in Paris’s 14th arrondissement allowed him to work on ever larger canvases.
Painted in 1927 and standing at over a meter high, La Source: Femme au broc is part of a series the artist created for a proposed mural of the same title. While the exact sequencing of the canvases remains unclear, together they reveal Ozenfant’s methodical, analytical process, as he explored and probed different compositional schemes and subtle variations in search of a definitive version of the image that occupied his imagination. Here, the artist creates a rich surface finish across the canvas, building his composition through a complex layering of oil paint and meticulously applied brushstrokes, to achieve an intriguing pattern of rhythmic ripples within each plane of color. As the eye moves across the canvas, these carefully delineated patterns shift from one form to the next, the lines changing direction or becoming more densely woven together, often mirroring the shapes of the forms they are describing. The result is a highly decorative effect, revealing Ozenfant’s increasingly experimental approach to painting during this period.
At the heart of the La Source: Femme au broc paintings stands the human figure, returning to Ozenfant’s work for the first time in over a decade, partially inspired by the artist’s recent visits to the prehistoric caves in Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of France. To the right of the canvas the curvaceous silhouette of a woman faces the viewer, a round vase and simple bucket clasped in her hands. To her left, a complex pattern of interlocking, semi-abstract forms depict a fountain of water as it springs from a large, organic rock formation, the stream executing a perfect arc before landing in another vase, carefully positioned beneath to catch the water.
In many ways, Ozenfant’s choice of subject matter can be seen as a direct reference to the art of the past, echoing the many permutations of the theme of a woman gathering water which had occupied artists through the centuries, from ancient Greece, through the Renaissance, to nineteenth century France. Here, Ozenfant presents a shockingly modern version of the theme, distilling the figure and the landscape down to a refined vocabulary of minimalist geometric forms and splitting the composition into two distinct halves so that at first glance the woman appears completely independent from her surroundings, floating within the empty white space. However, Ozenfant ensures she remains tethered to the earth through a series of dynamic visual rhythms that connect the smooth contours of her body with the flowing arabesques that delineate the edge of the rocks. Indeed, it is as if the woman can fit directly into the landscape, or perhaps has sprung from the formation itself, intrinsically linked to the natural world she inhabits.
By the mid-1920s, however, the collaboration between Ozenfant and Le Corbusier had begun to wane as their views on the direction and application of Purism diverged. Le Corbusier became increasingly focused on his architectural practice, while Ozenfant’s broad network of contacts among the European avant-garde—including artists and poets such as Jean (Hans) Arp, André Breton, Max Ernst, Piet Mondrian, Tristan Tzara, and Theo van Doesburg—expanded his artistic outlook, encouraging him to work in intriguing new directions as he absorbed and assimilated the ideas of his colleagues. He was particularly close to Fernand Léger during these years and joined the faculty of the artist’s Académie Moderne in 1924, while his style began to lose some of its austere rigor as he began to deal with a wider variety of subjects. At the same time, Ozenfant became increasingly interested in reviving the art of large-scale mural painting through the Purist aesthetic, and the enormous bay windows at his new, purpose-built studio on avenue Reille in Paris’s 14th arrondissement allowed him to work on ever larger canvases.
Painted in 1927 and standing at over a meter high, La Source: Femme au broc is part of a series the artist created for a proposed mural of the same title. While the exact sequencing of the canvases remains unclear, together they reveal Ozenfant’s methodical, analytical process, as he explored and probed different compositional schemes and subtle variations in search of a definitive version of the image that occupied his imagination. Here, the artist creates a rich surface finish across the canvas, building his composition through a complex layering of oil paint and meticulously applied brushstrokes, to achieve an intriguing pattern of rhythmic ripples within each plane of color. As the eye moves across the canvas, these carefully delineated patterns shift from one form to the next, the lines changing direction or becoming more densely woven together, often mirroring the shapes of the forms they are describing. The result is a highly decorative effect, revealing Ozenfant’s increasingly experimental approach to painting during this period.
At the heart of the La Source: Femme au broc paintings stands the human figure, returning to Ozenfant’s work for the first time in over a decade, partially inspired by the artist’s recent visits to the prehistoric caves in Les Eyzies in the Dordogne region of France. To the right of the canvas the curvaceous silhouette of a woman faces the viewer, a round vase and simple bucket clasped in her hands. To her left, a complex pattern of interlocking, semi-abstract forms depict a fountain of water as it springs from a large, organic rock formation, the stream executing a perfect arc before landing in another vase, carefully positioned beneath to catch the water.
In many ways, Ozenfant’s choice of subject matter can be seen as a direct reference to the art of the past, echoing the many permutations of the theme of a woman gathering water which had occupied artists through the centuries, from ancient Greece, through the Renaissance, to nineteenth century France. Here, Ozenfant presents a shockingly modern version of the theme, distilling the figure and the landscape down to a refined vocabulary of minimalist geometric forms and splitting the composition into two distinct halves so that at first glance the woman appears completely independent from her surroundings, floating within the empty white space. However, Ozenfant ensures she remains tethered to the earth through a series of dynamic visual rhythms that connect the smooth contours of her body with the flowing arabesques that delineate the edge of the rocks. Indeed, it is as if the woman can fit directly into the landscape, or perhaps has sprung from the formation itself, intrinsically linked to the natural world she inhabits.