The simple act of reading is depicted by Lasar Segall, blurred and reconstructed through a messy palette of mixed, merging colours. The subject is his first wife, Margarete, who the artist had met in Dresden in the year this work was created. It is not an idealised, intimate depiction and the foreshortened table creates gaps and distances between viewer, artist and subject. Equally, the figure is not interested in our presence as we unexpectedly enter this private, domestic scene - she remains engrossed in the mundane activity of reading. She leans forward, her shoulders hunched, with one arm propped up on the table in a casual position. The edge of the book is pulled up towards her features, suggesting her interest in her reading material, dragging the words closer to her as if to read with further intensity. Dressed in a simple white shirt with her hair pulled back away from her face, her depiction is as humble as the action she undertakes. Despite the large expanse of the table stretching out before her, however, the walls seem to close in around her, furthered by the darkening grey palette behind her raised arm. Segall has manipulated space to successfully suggest both distance and enclosure, both freedom in activity and the possible constraints of a domestic environment.
Segall was a peripatetic artist, born in Lithuania before residing in Brazil, yet maintaining constant contact with European centres of artistic modernism. He exhibited widely from Frankfurt to Dresden to Sao Paulo, and even founded artistic groups including the short-lived Brazilian institution Sociedade Pro-Arte Moderna. Often, his subjects explore the darker sides of humanity through expressionist, cubist forms. His art was even condemned as backward and 'degenerate', as the article written by critic Nicanor Mirandor published in 1944 highlights. The work of Segall often takes the form of fragmented faces, dissolved into angular forms reminiscent of Picasso or Juan Gris, whilst into his later years he pushes towards more harrowing subject matter akin to Surrealists and the paintings of Otto Dix, including Navio de emigrantes of 1939, where multiple bodies are crammed onto a two-dimensional ship, floating endlessly in a limited, washed-out colour palette. The portrayal of his first wife comes at an early moment in his career, yet it nevertheless represents an interesting departure when viewed against the rest of his artistic output, showing the range of the artist and his ability to make the mundane intriguing.
Layers of paint create the illusion of a three-dimensional surface to the canvas. At the same time, however, Segall leaves sections of the work thinner in paint application, to introduce texture through the prominent canvas weave. This is particularly noticeable on the background wall, slightly lighter in colour behind the figure's left shoulder, perhaps to signal an open doorway and a chance to escape the room. Segall sets up further dimension through an oblique perspective. The table is crammed into the relatively small pictorial space, pushing up against the picture plane. The matted paint on the corner of the table closest to the viewer even looks like it is pressed up against some unknown surface as the colours merge and blend together. We view the painting from below, monumentalising the figure reading. A simple, domestic, private act has been turned into a subject of fine art by Segall, onto the same level of history painting, mythological scenes and biblical depictions. Yet here, it is the ordinary and relatable figure who becomes memorialised and respected through the power of paint.
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