Joaquina

The artist painted Joaquina during his sojourn in southern Spain at the turn of 1910 and 1911 when he visited Seville, Cordoba, and Toledo. The portrait features a dancer Joaquina. The painter used an austere drawing style which precisely captures the characteristic features of the model in harmony with the flawless application of only several tints of colours. With a remarkable certainty, Matisse incorporated black in the colourful area of the dancer’s face, thus achieving an optical balance. Colours always played a crucial role in the artist’s production, not only during the Fauvism period, but also later.