City Scene

Description

The date assigned to the work, ca. 1942, is based on its connection to a 1942 painting by Delvaux, La recontre, reproduced in Butor, p. 196.
Delvaux studied architecture at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, and then became a painter. Inspired by the art of de Chirico and Magritte, he joined the Surrealists, never fully relinquishing the academic tradition in which he had trained. Several trips to Italy deepened his love of classical architecture and Quattrocento painting, especially linear perspective and idealized female figures, both aspects of which are featured in this drawing.
The present sheet is similar in many respects to the painting The Meeting (La Rencontre) of 1942, in a French private collection.
Label copy from exhibition "Dreamscapes: The Surrealist Impulse," August 22 - October 25, 1998