Greeks Canal

If José Cúneo's characteristic skies refer to his contact with the expressionist painting of Chaïm Soutine, the Fauves and other representatives of the European historical avant-garde that were already present in his landscapes and hamlets of Cagnes-sur-Mer, the association of the sky in this work with the supernatural skies of El Greco is inevitable. While his works were moving ever more firmly away from any desire for mimesis in terms of chromatic palette, orthogonality and spatial construction, the city of Venice presented "kinks," such as the church campanile featured in this piece, which Cuneo's pictorial language further emphasized. That instability that bends the edges of the buildings and makes the eye flow both through the water and through the materiality of the buildings' facades.