In the 1917 oil painting “Orange”, André Evard unfolds a surreal synthesis of landscape and still life. The angular forms, rendered in cool shades of blue and green, evoke jagged mountain peaks; yet at the same time they detach themselves from any naturalistic depiction and form a ground for an object. Above this angular structure floats a monumental, glowing orange sun—or is it an orange?
The work was created at a time of upheaval, when artists began to leave the external world behind in favour of a poetic, dreamlike reality. Here, Evard already takes up ideas that would later shape Surrealism (1920–1940): the merging of dream and reality. His composition oscillates between abstraction and vision—an early testament to that artistic movement which sought to transcend the visible in order to reveal the invisible.