60. Postures [ca. 1920]

Arthur Segal is currently regarded as a product of European culture, the territorial barriers being crossed by the artist himself, who successfully carried out his activity in Romania, Germany, Switzerland, and England. He was drawn to the most pertinent movements that were contemporary with him. He painted under the influence of Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, he joined the German Secessionism, he was an Expressionist, but also dallied with the Dadaist theories. In parallel with his artistic creation, he also exerted his talent as a theoretician of painting, being a very successful teacher. In the final part of his career, after he permanently settled in England (1936), the painter greatly devoted himself to a teaching career, opening a new painting school. "The Painting School for Professionals and Non-Professionals", opened in July 1937 at London, became the first school in the world that approached painting as a method in psychotherapy, being supported by credentials signed by Sigmund Freud, Ernest Jones, Ernst Simmel, Franz Alexander, John Rickman, Henry Dicks, Mary Chadwick and Mary Barkas, as well as others. Being active in London and in Oxford, Segal taught and painted together with his students until his death in 1944, managing to tirelessly continue his work over the entire period of the Second World War. During those years, the painter was very interested in the effects of light, experimenting with the surfaces and their textures in contact with light. Among other things, he had a preoccupation with existential issues, and he transposed them into works such as this one, where the protagonist, captured in four different postures, becomes the representative of an entire social category.

References

"Arthur Segal, 1875-1944" (catalogue), Argon Verlag, Berlin, 1987.

Dimensions

width 34 cm, height 45 cm, custom 45 × 34 cm

Description

gouache on cardboard, signed and noted bottom left, with pencil, "A. Segal, T'ai cherchée cordialement"

Dating

ca. 1920

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