Five Nudes 1950

Sanyu made this painting of five nudes with fluid brushstrokes, mostly with the same pale fleshy color. The figures jostle together against a plum-purple background, their cartoonish forms and flattened perspective almost comical. I imagine Sanyu building up the painting one figure at a time, adding a splash of red hair, and playing around with their different poses. The surface seems casual, intuitive, like he’s working out an idea through repeated adjustments, each nude an echo of the last, a kind of variation on a theme. There is a playful quality to the lines and shapes which is interesting in its artlessness. The nudes’ feet are surrounded by small, pale, flowered, and at the bottom of the composition, Sanyu has included a cat and rabbit. These images remind me of Matisse’s paintings of odalisques, and other painters interested in the body as a landscape for experimentation and the interplay between representation and abstraction. All painting is a conversation, and each artwork builds upon those that have come before!