Self-Portrait before Crocuses, 1913

Self-Portrait before Crocuses, 1913


SELF-PORTRAIT BEFORE CROCUSES
1913
Oil on hardboard
35 x 35 cm

The self-portrait from 1913 shows the artist at the age of 37. At that time André Evard was in a transitional phase in which he wanted to free himself from Art Nouveau elements and sought an individual path to abstraction.

The symmetrical self-portrait in the foreground shows geometric shapes: the beard forms a triangle and the melon has a hemispherical bulge. The self-portrait thus forms a discrepancy between the painterly, sculptural eye and nose area and the geometric beard and hat. This geometricization, which refers to cubism, is reminiscent of Cézanne’s famous quotation from 1904: “All forms in nature can be traced back to the sphere, cone and cylinder”.