Brazilian Landscape 1925

Lasar Segall made this Brazilian Landscape with oil on canvas using a restricted palette of blues, greens, and earthy pinks. I'm imagining him working on this, and wondering what it was like to arrive in a new place? How disorienting it must have been. He’s got a really interesting method here, making square blocks of buildings in shades of pink and white, stacked together in a kind of haphazard way. There are lovely blues, suggesting a night sky, maybe, with a big moon. I can feel the way that Segall built this up, trying out different forms and colors to evoke this new world. It's almost like he's piecing together memories and impressions. You can sense him making connections with other artists, like Paul Klee or even some of the early Cubists. He's taking what he knows and using it to make sense of something totally new. And that’s what artists do, right? We’re all talking to each other, across time and space.