Portrait of a lady

Intellectual, writer, poet, and also a talented painter, Max Jacob was a fundamental figure, both tragic and comic, of the Paris of the avant-garde. A friend of Picasso and Modigliani, who did his portrait several times, spent a tormented life. A brilliant thinker, he was confronted daily with doubts concerning religion and ethics. In the end, in the years of the Second World War, he saw his own family of Jewish origin exterminated by the Nazis and was personally interned in a French concentration camp, where he died of hardship and bronchopneumonia. His drawings, usually quick sketches, show irony and fun. On the contrary, his paintings, although quite rare, reveal a complex artist who followed from afar the dictates of Cubism and Futurism, always maintaining a strong figurative character. In this work, in particular, Jacob uses an touch embracing Vuillard, composing a magnificent portrait of a lady, with great taste and sensitivity to color. Her face, with its decisive features, stands out in front of a green, floral tapestry, as in Van Gogh's paintings. Moving lines of color give the pastel a swirling harmony that makes it impressive in an immediate manner.