Landscape
Jean Metzinger
French, 1883–1956
1912-14?
An oil painting in which Jean Metzinger transforms a rural scene into interlocking geometric planes and bright, decorative color to suggest multiple viewpoints.
You’re struck by a jewel-like red central field dotted with blocky orange trees, surrounded by tumbling angular hills, stylized trees and architectural shards in luminous blues, greens and golds that make the landscape feel both playful and fractured.
By fusing Cubist simultaneity with radiant, nonnaturalistic color, Metzinger helped push early Cubism toward lyrical abstraction and decorative modernism—an important step toward Orphism and later explorations of color and space.
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
28 3/4 x 36 1/4" (73 x 92.1 cm)
Classification
Department
Credit
Gift of T. Catesby Jones
Accession
410.1941
Palette
Art Terms
Exhibitions
