Max-Daniel - L'Automne

Max-Daniel — Autumn — 2026
With Autumn, Max-Daniel continues his series devoted to the seasons in an image where contemporary portrait, Symbolist references, and rich ornament converge.
The female figure, frontal and austere, appears almost like a profane icon. The red hair and the extraordinary garment in gold, copper, ochre, and brown tones concentrate all the colors of autumn. The spirals, checkered patterns, circles and eye motifs give the garment an ornamental profusion that naturally evokes the world of Viennese Secession, without attempting to reproduce an existing work.
Behind the figure, the large golden disk acts at once as an autumn sun, a halo, and a purely pictorial element. Its radiance contrasts strongly with the turquoise-blue hand-worked surrounding the character.
The work belongs to Max-Daniel’s particular approach; for several years he has been developing hybrid work combining digital creation, printing, and traditional plastic interventions.
The image here serves as a starting point rather than a culmination. After printing on canvas, the work was extensively refined manually: painting, highlights, surface modifications, and especially the true application of gold leaf, visible in the details, whose irregularities, folds, and overlays produce a material that photographic reproduction cannot fully convey.
The antique frame itself is part of this research. It has been restored, patinated, and enriched with fragments of gilding, deliberately irregular. Its nicks and traces of age are not concealed but integrated into the overall aesthetic of the piece. The black surround and the worn gilding thus prolong the contemporary icon-like character of the image.
The contrast between the almost photographic precision of the face and hands, the graphic richness of the garment, and the material interventions of painting and gilding precisely creates the ambiguity sought by Max-Daniel: a work situated at the border of the printed image, painting, collage, and object.
Unique work, signed Max-Daniel and dated 2026.
The canvas is mounted and presented in its frame, with hanging system already installed, ready to be exhibited.