Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape
| Bathers: Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape | |
|---|---|
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| Artist | Jean Metzinger |
| Year | c. 1905-1906 |
| Medium | Oil on canvas |
| Dimensions | 116 cm × 88.8 cm ( 45 3⁄8 in × 35 in) |
| Location | Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Spain |
 Gauguin y el viaje a lo exótico: vídeo explicativo de la exposición (explanatory video of the exhibition), min. 434-440 (Spanish) |
Baigneuses: Deux nus dans un paysage exotique (also called Bathers: Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape and Bañistas: dos desnudos en un paisaje exótico) is an oil painting created circa 1905-06 by the French artist and theorist Jean Metzinger (1883–1956). Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape is a Proto-Cubist work executed in a highly personal Divisionist style during the height of the Fauve period. The painting is now in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, Spain ().
Two Nudes in an Exotic Landscape is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 116 x 88.8 cm (45 3/8 by 35 in), signed Metzinger (lower right). The work—consistent in style with other works by Metzinger created circa 1905-1906, such as Femme au Chapeau (Woman with a Hat)—represents two nude women, one seen from the rear and the other from a more frontal position, in a lush, tropical, or subtropical setting. The landscape contains a wide variety of exotic geometrized elements (trees, bushes, flowers, a lake or river, a mountain range and a partly cloudy sky). Metzinger's use of color in Two Nudes is extremely Fauve; quasi-pure reds, greens, blues and violets, juxtaposed in groups as if randomly.
While the two nudes are treated with rather natural colors, the rest of the canvas appears treated with more artificial tints, tones, hues and shades. Unlike other Fauve works of the same period by Henri Matisse, André Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck or Kees van Dongen, Metzinger's composition is strongly Cézannian. The vertical format and light colors of the sky and treatment of foreground and background elements create a flattening of spatial perspective, reminiscent of Georges Seurat, or Paul Cézanne's 'multiple viewpoints', his search for order, discipline and permanence. However, the brushstrokes and overall appearance are not at all Cézannian in nature.
By 1905 Neo-Impressionism had witnessed a major resurgence, with recent exhibitions by Maximilien Luce (, March 1904), Paul Signac (Galerie Druet, December 1904), Georges Seurat (Salon des Indépendants, 1905), Henri-Edmond Cross (Galerie Druet, March–April 1905). Metzinger's unique style of Neo-Impressionism resulted from the unification of several influences in addition to that of Seurat and Cézanne; that of Vincent van Gogh, with his heavy impasto, dense brushstrokes; and—following posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in 1903 and 1906—that of Paul Gauguin, with its exotic sumptuousness and sensuality. By this time Metzinger had already developed a full-fledged Divisionist facture with large, bold mosaic-like brushwork, beyond that of Cross or Signac.
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