RAMON AZUL (1957) - L'Ovale de la veille

RAMON AZUL - Mixed media: print with pigment ink, brush-on varnish applied by hand, for the durable protection of the artwork.

A nude woman is seated, viewed from the side, knees drawn up to the chest, arms folded around the legs. The head tilts and rests on the knee: the lower part of the face disappears behind the leg, only the eye remains outside, open, directed downward. The dark hair, pulled back, frees the ear and stretches into a strand toward the upper edge of the canvas. The hand falls over the shin, fingers relaxed. At the bottom right, a foot appears, toes almost at the edge. Around her, the orange fills the entire field, with no floor or horizon.
The body closes into an oval that almost occupies the entire canvas, yet the eye stays open. The painting does not depict sleep but wakefulness: a consciously held withdrawn position that shelters without cutting off what lies outside. The orange pushes from all sides; the blue does not yield.
Cobalt blue for all skin, almost black in the hair and in the shadow running under the leg to the light blues of the back, shoulder, and forehead. The background, Sienna earth, lightens to golden ochre along the top edge, with broad brushstrokes that follow the curve of the back and reveal the weave of the canvas. The body’s shading is smooth and melted, with no tool marks; the material only lifts at the top left, where a pale streak crosses the orange.

Mixed media: print with pigment ink, brush-on varnish applied by hand, for the durable protection of the artwork.
Varnish applied by hand, for the depth of the blues and the durable protection of the artwork.
Support: premium canvas stretched on a wood frame, ready to hang.
Format: 40 × 40 cm.
Signed RAMON AZUL · Galerie Labo Joconde / Atelier Joconde · certificate of authenticity provided.

RAMON AZUL is one of the creations bringing together artists Le Yack, Neo Pablo and Popsan within Atelier Joconde, a family studio where three sensibilities coexist: neorealism, pop, and libre figurative. Azul, in Spanish, means blue, and under this name the Studio paints only one thing: a nude seated body, knees drawn to the chest, arms folded over the legs, head resting where it finds support, eyes sometimes closed, sometimes fixed on the viewer. The skin is ultramarine blue, green, turquoise or brick, the background a saturated flat field with no floor or decor: color does not describe the body, it expresses its state, in the spirit of Picasso’s Blue Period and the arbitrary color of the fauves. The modeling remains smooth and sculptural, volumes full, the silhouette closed into an oval occupying almost the entire canvas. When the same figure returns in a grid, each square reinterpreted in another range, it is the serial repetition of pop that takes over and makes an intimate gesture a motif.

Each work is unique.
Instagram @atelierjoconde.

Keywords: RAMON AZUL, blue nude, folded body, Blue Period, saturated color flat, serial pop figure, French contemporary art, Le Yack, Atelier Joconde, female nude, orange background, cobalt blue, sculptural modeling