School of Paris. Beginning of the 20th century.

School of Paris. Beginning of the 20th century.
"Ensoñación".
Waxes on paper.
Illegible signature.
Measurements: 65,50 x 50 cm.

In this intimate and vaporous scene, we witness a moment suspended between figurative representation and reverie. Three feminine figures -barely delineated between veils of color- are grouped in an interior space that seems to float out of time. There are no firm contours, no defined spatial hierarchies. Everything melts into a warm, sensorial atmosphere that appeals directly to intuition rather than to visual logic.

The pictorial treatment immediately reveals the keys to the School of Paris, that artistic melting pot that in the early twentieth century brought together in the French capital creators from all over the world, eager to break with academic tradition and explore new expressive avenues. This painting, with its loose brushstrokes, its emotive use of color and the evocation of the everyday with a poetic sensibility, connects especially with artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard or even Marie Laurencin, who explored domestic intimacy and the female figure from a modern, sensual and subjective point of view. The pictorial material is loose, rich in textures, with impastoed colors that vibrate with each other. Pinks, oranges, violets and greens intermingle in a chromatic symphony that recalls both the most restrained Fauvism and the impressionist heritage reinterpreted from symbolism. The aim here is not visual fidelity, but an emotional truth, a suggestion rather than a statement.

The scene probably represents a bourgeois interior: a living room or bedroom with curtains, cushions and upholstery, which rather than framing, envelop the figures, as if they were part of the emotional furniture of the space. The women -one with her back turned, another barely sketched, a third with a hidden face- do not interact with each other, but seem immersed in their thoughts or in a silent choreography. This introspective, almost dreamlike treatment is characteristic of a certain modern painting that explored shared solitude, private life and feminine psychology without falling into drama or explicit narration.

This movement was not a school in the strict sense, but a designation for artists active in Paris during the first decades of the 20th century, especially in Montparnasse. It included both French and numerous foreign artists (Eastern European Jews, Spaniards, Italians, Russians, etc.), who sought creative freedom in the open and avant-garde atmosphere of the French capital. This work responds to this common sensibility: formal freedom, lyricism, subjectivity and an intimate, non-narrative look at everyday life. There is no denunciation or idealization, but an invitation to dwell on the sensorial, on the visual experience as an autonomous fact.