Out of the blue shadow 2021

Nick Alm painted "Out of the Blue Shadow" with oils, though we don't have a date for its creation. The painting presents a woman descending some rocks and it evokes the classical trope of the nude female form. The nude has a complicated history in painting as a way to render female bodies as both pure and sensual, drawing from earlier conventions in art history while simultaneously challenging them. Alm was trained at the Florence Academy of Art, which emphasizes classical figurative painting in its curriculum. How does an education in art institutions inform this image? To understand the social structures that influence the content of Alm's paintings, we might look to critical texts about the nude throughout art history. With this knowledge, we can better understand the painting's cultural significance.