Jean Welz; South African 1900-1975; Matisse's Model
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Literature : Elza Miles (1997) The World of Jean Welz, Cape Town: Fernwood Press, illustrated in colour on page 60.
Notes : In 1943 Jean Welz moved into the Hugo Naudé Art Centre at 93 Russell Street in Worcester. The change of address ushered in a period of intense creativity. Welz's output ranged from figural studies to geometric abstractions. His technique varied too: from landscapes with showy brushwork to disciplined still-lifes and nudes evidencing his preference for precise mark making. The period also saw him refine his austere yet enigmatic colour palette. Welz frequently painted from life but the source for this "inspired nude"1 was a 1939 photo by renowned Hungarian expat Brassaï showing Henri Matisse in a white coat drawing a nude model in a Paris studio. Welz's composition adopts the vantage of the photographer but excludes Matisse, who has been described as resembling "a scientist striving for a cure for cancer in the laboratory".2 Welz's strategy humanises the anonymous sitter, who bares herself to a grand-scale painting of a nude in an autumn landscape, not the viewer. The outcome is a strikingly contemporary meditation on artifice and agency in nude portraiture. 1. Elza Miles (1997) The World of Jean Welz. Cape Town: Fernwood Press, page 49. 2. Alastair Sooke (2014) Henri Matisse: A Second Life. London: Penguin Books, unpaginated.
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