Alfonso Michel

In contrast to the complicated "nativist" characteristics deployed in Michel's earlier Nude [Desnudo] of around 1948 (Blaisten Collection), here a fair-skinned, green-eyed young woman sits comfortably in an ornately carved armchair, upholstered in a striped purple fabric. All around her, brightly colored bands of complimentary violet and emerald green, accented with ochre and sienna, create a prismatic effect, suggesting that the space she occupies is a vaulted, light-filled solarium. A large crystal decanter sits on a table to her right, affording Michel the opportunity to play further with transparency and prismatic surface. These elements create the feeling of a well-appointed bourgeois parlor. In this context the figure's nudity seems somewhat incongruous. The near full-figure format and flattened rendering of the figure relate this painting to his earlier Nude of around 1950 (Blaisten Collection) as well. However in contrast to the figure there, who clutches at the white cloth, concealing her body, here the figure sits passively, her body exposed, with her green eyes cast upward. The only conceit to modesty is the fan that nearly conceals her pubic area. It would seem that Michel's intention is to mitigate the inherently sensual atmosphere. In fact, however, the bourgeois surroundings and the coy fan give the woman the appearance of "nakedness", as opposed to "nudity" or being in a state of nature. Indeed, this painting might be a portrait, although the identity of the sitter is disguised behind the generalized title. Despite being an attractive and relatively sympathetic painting, the lavish environment and the sitter's somewhat vapid expression suggest a certain irony, referring perhaps to countless portraits of the Mexican bourgeois elite, completed by Michel's peers in the 1940s and 1950s. Apart from the fact that the sitter is unclothed, this painting could hang above a fireplace mantel.