A young woman with emaciated features, a baby in her arms, rolls her eyes to the sky as in a prayer or a cry for help. The dark background of the painting gives it a ghostly, dramatic look. The artist has reinforced the outlines with a black line and the colorful costume as well as the scarlet scarf stand out sharply against the rest and form a contrast to the dark and dismal mood of the painting. The overly heavy brushstrokes in the background further reinforce this atmosphere of concern. Greco wants above all to transmit emotions to the detriment of realistic representation.
#22 – Inquiétude - huile sur toile - 100 x 73cm - 1938
Taureaux
When he was visiting the southwest of France in 1938, Roman Greco, was invited to a bullfight by a group of friends, but as soon as the first fight was over, he stood up, “never again! ” he said as he left the premises. A few months later, his comrade Chaïm Soutine showed hin some of his animal paintings: he depicted his morbid anxieties and his despair by painting slaughtered animals, flayed bloody. These two events are surely at the origin of paintings # 24 and 25 and drawing # 72.
This first painting (# 25) displays all the violence of the bullfight and the confusion, the dismay felt by the artist. He scourges the surface of the canvas with powerful and sharp lines which, with the curved lines suggest disorderly movements. The black mass of the bull stands out clearly against an orange background, on the right, we can notice the silhouette of the matador stretching out his arm; the blue blade of his sword strikes the animal's head. Two small, slightly oblique black lines sketch a smile of satisfaction on his face. The body of the bull with its ill-defined contours is made of successive layers applied from bottom to top in order to render the jolts of an animal in distress. The brown and reddish tones on the back show wounds, and on its flanks whitish streaks flow like foam, sweat. The beast is exhausted. However, it is his head that captures all the attention: occupying the central part of the painting, its outlines are a little better defined than the rest. And that white eye! This white eye which emerges like a cry for help, frightened, distraught but also frightening, distressing.
More than a bull and a matador, it is his emotions, his dismay, his disgust that Roman Greco has represented here. Nothing to do, however, with Soutine's bloody excess which had also shocked Greco.
# 25 - Taureau - oil on canvas - 92x73cm - 1938
The other painting (# 24) testifies to emotions that are more internalized but just as strong: by its composition first. The blackish mass of the bull occupies most of the painted surface, its body touching all four sides, just entering the frame. (Like a zoom lens taking the subject up close.) It gives off such an impression of presence, strength and power that one would think the animal is ready to leap out of the canvas.
The choice of a vermilion red background to represent the sand of the arena is not trivial, carried out with a knife as a flat, it contributes in any case to bring out all the strength of the animal. The paste spread impulsively and anarchically on the deformed back and neck testifies to the violence of the blows received, we can guess wounds, cuts and blood which flowed to the forehead and the horns . The bruised bull, head down, exhausted, seems resigned but his empty gaze becomes disturbing, threatening, frightening. Suddenly we wake up, no it's not a zoom effect, we are there, standing, exactly in the place of the matador who is going to give the blow, unless ...
# 24 - Le vaincu- oil on canvas - 92x75cm - 1939
# 72 - Indian ink - Corrida - 50x65cm
This Indian ink drawing illustrates the same violence, the same confusion, the same nightmare as the two previous paintings. The numerous curved lines translate the disorderly movements of the bull, the fine, tenuous lines which represent the matador underline his fragility compared to the heavy and thick lines which give all its weight, all its strength to the furious beast.
In this simplified composition, the play of lines and variations on the blues create a harmonious space made of contrasts and chords. the opposition between blues and ochres - tempered by red - gives these fruits a somewhat “solemn” presence. The rectilinear lines are balanced by the curved lines of the central area and a few light lines compensate for the dark aspect of the wall. These organized arrangements of shapes, colors, shadows and light make it a peaceful painting.
# 72 - Indian ink - Corrida - 50x65cm
Taking up techniques of African Art and cubism experimented with by Picasso and Braque a few decades earlier, this silhouette whose overall shape emerges like an apparition imposes itself on the eye. Thrown on the viewer, its simplified, schematized forms help to create a dramatized image.
The softness of the curves and the warm colors of the two bodies oppose the stiffness and verticality of the walls on the side, as well as the coldness of the bluish gray areas. Tenderness in a vise of hardness. Once again, Roman Greco sacrificed anatomical truth in favor of the internal structure of the work. But why “Christmas in the rubble”? The walls may be vestiges, ruins, but nothing seems to evoke Christmas except the theme of mother and child, of birth. Nothing, on the contrary, suggests a festive Christmas, either religious or secular. This mother is alone in an empty and cold environment, her face delicately bent over her baby; but what is she doing? Thinking? Dreaming? Waiting? Resigning? Crying? We do not know. But no one can remain unmoved to this destitution, this immense solitude, to this metaphysical depth.
# 45 - Christmas in the rubble - oil on canvas - 81x65cm - 1937