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Lleida Museum of Art

Le manteau bleu

Le manteau bleu, Xavier Gosé i Rovira, 1912. Conté, gouache and fixative on Bristol paper. Lleida Museum of Art.

 

Le manteau bleu, Xavier Gosé i Rovira, 1912. Conté, gouache and fixative on Bristol paper. Lleida Museum of Art.

 

In 1900, Gosé (Alcalá de Henares, 1876 – Lleida, 1915) started to work for satirical magazines in Paris, which were very popular at the time. He soon turned his attention to the world of prostitution, prostitutes and their clients, with an attitude that was not entirely free from censure and disapproval. His drawings, in a realistic style, are characterised by a gradual stylisation and synthesis and they assimilate the compositions of Japanese engravings. They maintain a balance between empty and painted areas, colours and fine lines and, taken together, these would come to define Gosé's characteristic style.

In Le manteau bleu Gosé focuses on two female figures, their poses and their dresses, with very elaborate textures in watercolours, much more so than their faces, which are conventionally beautiful and entirely without expression. The refined eroticism of this scene alludes to the popularised image of a perverse and decadent world that is not immune from the male prejudices of the turn of the century.

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