La Bataille des Pommes de Terre
| La Bataille des Pommes de Terre |
|---|
| Raoul Michau , 1948 |
| oil on wood |
| 38 × 46 cm |
| Musée national d'art moderne, Paris
Link to the picture |
La Bataille des Pommes de Terre ( The Battle of the Potatoes or The Potato Battle ) is a painting by the surrealist Raoul Michau .
description
Michau's painting shows a large number of potatoes lying on the clods of a field under a cloudy sky that takes up about the upper two thirds of the picture and have already developed long shoots. These shoots are directed towards the sky and look like stretched arms with spread fingers. Between the upright potato shoots in the left third of the picture rises a pole, inclined slightly to the left, on which a torn piece of cloth or paper flutters like a flag, which was apparently pressed against this obstacle by the wind blowing from left to right. A dark cloud or smoke formation over the horizon on the right suggests the smoke over a battlefield and intensifies the drama of the depiction.
history
The artist dedicated the picture to the Pilling couple in London . In 1953, the owners donated the painting to the Musée national d'art moderne in Paris, where it now hangs. In 1968 a color reproduction of the picture adorned an edition of the book Kaputt by Curzio Malaparte . There the “flag” above the potatoes does not appear white, as it appears on black and white reproductions of the painting, but red. In 1980 the picture was shown in Wieland Schmied's work 200 years of fantastic painting . On the occasion of the exhibition 13 Things it was shown in Waldenbuch in 1992 .
The artist
Raoul Michau (1897–1981) was born in Tours and studied in Shanghai , among other places . One of his teachers was the Russian artist Podgoursky. Michau lived in China for six years, then traveled the world and returned to France in 1930, where he exhibited at the Salon Des Surindependants, the Salon des independants, the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Tuileries . A retrospective of his works was shown in several museums in 1975 and 1976 under the title Raoul Michau . Many of his works are in the collections of the Center Pompidou .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Illustration at Abebooks
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from April 17, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Museum for Folk Culture in Württemberg, branch of the Württemberg State Museum [sic!] Stuttgart, 13 things. Form function meaning. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Museum for Folk Culture in Württemberg Waldenbuch Castle from October 3, 1992-28. February 1993 , Stuttgart 1992, ISBN 3-929055-24-4 , p. 186 f.
- ^ Short biography of Michau
