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Painting

Houses of Malakoff

Casas de Malakoff

Dordio Gomes (1890-1976)

1923

Oil on canvas

Inventory sheet

A key Portuguese artwork of the first half of the 20th century, this stretch of houses in the suburbs of Paris would also be explored by Dordio Gomes through engraving and in his Autorretrato da Natureza Morta (Still Life Self-Portrait) produced a year later. Malakoff is on the outskirts of Paris, named in honour of the French victory in one of the battles of the Crimean War. The place has attracted numerous artists, both as a place of residence and as a subject.

In this painting, the tension generated by the distortion of volumes and space, as if seen through a lens, provokes a sensation of vertigo and creates a disquieting and desolate atmosphere. The simplification of forms, the strategic placement of black lines and the accentuation of edges reveal the artist’s interpretation of a synthesis of influences that marked European art of this period, in which Cézanne and German expressionism predominated.