Battle scene

This gouache will have been executed in France during the war, where the artist had been mobilized. It already belongs to the third and last phase of his relatively small body of work in which the color becomes more important in the general scheme of the composition, yet a graphic memory is still determinant. The black and thick outlines makes up for the scarce details, as well as the structuring lines and those of rhythmic value, with the same intensity in the general composition. Its broken and angular form, refusing the curve, creates an Expressionist aggressiveness. The planned colors follow the spaces delimited by the lines, constructing a flat and saturated space, so much that the white background rhythmically contributes in an attitude close to cloisonnisme, characteristic of some situations of the Die Brucke movement or the Jugendstil, and reinforced by the subject itself. An explosion occupies the right margin, although outlined graphically, allows for a more informed color moment that makes an explicit use of the material of the support coupled with some acid colors, rare in the artist's palette. The movement of these colors traces an important oblique in the general composition of the scene, crossed by another one creased by the soldier's open arms and extreme by an expressive hand that is cut out on the white background. The body, which with the explosion is thrown to the left, is the creator of instability and tension, after all the great theme of this phase of the painting of Cristiano Cruz.