OTTE SKÖLD
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Otte Sköld painted “Modellen tar avrivning” (“The model takes a rub-down”) in 1916 when he was twenty-four years old and lived in Copenhagen. Copenhagen was where he could study, and be inspired by new cubistic paintings by French artists, to try such himself.
The woman in the picture is Arna, Sköld’s wife to be. The place is a room. He emphasises this with the window view up on the left. Arna stands full-length in the middle of the picture, her back turned towards onlookers. She is drying her back with a bath towel. When first looking at the painting one thinks one sees nothing at all, the colours are brown and dark. But when the eyes adjust themselves the motif becomes clearer. The blue and green in the window view are contrast colours to the brown and grey, as is the red water-can standing on the table to the right of the model. And, the white towels with interwoven red borders hanging on the right. If looking for geometric forms there are areas with right angles, circle forms and pointed, cone-like triangles. Cones can be clearly seen in the towels. The various forms affect our sight, the eye begins to wander between similar and dissimilar forms.
At the beginning of the 20th Century reactions began to arise about impressionism and expressionism and the dissolution of the motif, that was beginning to look like steam haze or fog of paint on the canvas. Matisse, Picasso and Marcel Duchamp stood for new ideas which spread like an avalanche over the entire world and, in fact, initiated real revolutions within the visual arts. Picasso was the central figure in cubism. The cubists used geometric forms, not only cubes but all kinds of geometric bodies through which the whole motif could be seen. It was a time of experiment, not least in how far one could simplify a motif and still retain recognition of such. Sometimes, just a small detail was enough to see the whole motif.
Otte Sköld’s cubistic experiments during his years in Copenhagen were important for his future artistry. He had learned how to literally build pictures.
