Ezekiel Baroukh was a member of the Surrealist group Art and Liberty, formed in Egypt in 1938. He settled in France in 1946 where he established himself as an abstract painter. Baigneuse [Bather] (1952) was painted the year Baroukh frequented the academy of the painter André Lhote – who is regarded as a contributor to Cubism – in Paris. The sculptural and deconstructed rendering of the body of the bather, as well as her reclining position with her legs crossed and her head resting on her folded arm, recall female nudes by Pablo Picasso. But the figure here is not naked. The canvas’s elongated format, emphasised by horizontal lines and dynamic curves, impart a restful atmosphere to the scene, despite the contrasted palette dominated by shades of red. The bather’s eyes are closed: the painting’s actual topic seems to be sleep or, rather, dreams. Her spheric right breast, dominating the scene, conjures both a moon and the head of a possible second figure embracing the woman. Their arms merge into one. It ends in a hand with four short, rounded fingers evoking an animal’s paw. These dreamlike elements place Baigneuse at the crossroads of geometric figuration and Surrealism.
This is the first time the work of Ezekiel Baroukh is presented at Biennale Arte.
—Nadine Atallah
