French school; first half of the 20th century.

French school; first half of the 20th century.
Untitled.
Oil on board.
It presents faults in the pictorial surface, located in the edges.
It has an illegible signature.
Measurements: 28 x 24 cm.
This masculine portrait, resolved in a close framing and of intense psychological frontality, stands out for the solid volumetric construction of the face. The head emerges with rotundity on a dark and neutral background, modeled by means of transitions of light and shadow that accentuate cheekbones and jaw. The almost sculptural treatment of the physiognomy reveals a clear concern for weight and structure, beyond physical resemblance.
In the first half of the 20th century, after the Fauvist and Cubist rupture, many artists returned to the figure with a renewed language: formal simplification, firm contours and a modeling that, without abandoning tradition, incorporated the structural lesson of Cézanne and the synthetic solidity of Cubism.Here there is no extreme fragmentation, but a clear awareness of form as architecture. The face is not diluted in the brushstroke, but asserts itself with an almost stony density. This tension between modernity and tradition places the work in the context of a French figuration that, in the interwar period, sought a balance between formal experimentation and the permanence of portraiture as an essential genre.