Les Odalisques 1945

Oscar Dominguez made this painting 'Les Odalisques' with oil paint on canvas. It features simplified, angular forms in a palette of blues, purples, reds, and browns. I can imagine the artist standing before the canvas, brush in hand, trying to make something new. He paints with a restless energy, each shape shifting and sliding into the next. The paint is applied thinly, allowing the texture of the canvas to show through in some areas, while in others, the colours are built up. The odalisque figures are fragmented and distorted, yet they possess a strange kind of beauty. He’s been playing with the language of Cubism and Surrealism, but bending it to his own ends. I can feel him wrestling with these different approaches, trying to forge something new. We can see how artists build on each other’s ideas, reinterpreting and reinventing them for their own time. Painting is a process of experimentation, a conversation between the artist and the canvas, and between artists across generations.