Le Pho (1907-2001) Lot n° 16

Maternité Oil, ink and color on silk, signed lower right 46 x 32 cm - 18 1/8 x 12 5/8 in Maternity - an essential subject in History of Art – has always inspired painters. The talented and studious artist Lê Phổ made these Madonnas the main theme of his work. His journey through Europe in the early 1930s enabled him to discover the Mannerists and the Primitives, which was a revelation and lead him to redefine his style. Marked by these primitive iconographic codes, Lê Phổ proposes here a profane Maternity. Borrowing a domestic iconography, the artist pays tribute to a universal maternity. Moreover, Lê Phổ retains from the Italian Mannerists the faces made of elongated ovals, but also the loose and undulating line. Drawing on the precepts he received during his apprenticeship at the Indochina School of Fine Arts, he offers a sensitive and delicate vision of a universal theme. The use of silk recalls his Vietnamese origins as do the ebony hair and porcelain complexions of the models. But already new influences are beginning to show: the palette is more vivid, imposing yellow, while the background is more abstract, revealing the start of a new style dictated by the influence of Impressionism, which the artist would adopt in the 1950s.