My studio in Paris

This painting was done the year Armando de Basto began oil painting. The clichés of the Parisian art scene, such as the divan, the guitar or the modern and elegant type of the girl, help to create a modernity to which this painting is receptive. The hallmark of this attention is the general planning of the space created by color, within a range of dried greens and ochres involved, associated with the decorative motifs of the divan that have continuity in the vertical cushions and are complemented by the tapestry. This continuity of motifs nearly fills the surface of the screen with the same value, reducing the depth of field. The model of this painting is the lover of the artist, Yvonne, with whom he lived until leaving Paris. Placed obliquely, it is thus surrounded by the tonality of the color and counterbalanced by the inclination of the guitar. The circular motif of the bottom tapestry meets the girl's head and develops a curious complementarity with the collar of the white shirt, in order to subtly frame the face. The right end of the screen partially presents a shelf serving as a pretext to create some monochrome planes that break the risk of monotony and articulate with the dark rectangle of the foreground formed by the carpet. Although carried out with a certain ingenuity limiting the scope of a more conceptualized proposal, this work matters in the framework of the beginning of the twentieth century for the freedom of execution and full intuition of the new values.