The Conquest of the Air - Roger de La Fresnaye

The conquest of the air fascinated many artists at the beginning of the 20th century because it was an echo of the new civilization that was emerging, of the speed, machines and factories that characterized it. Among these artists, Roger de La Fresnaye proposes his vision of the subject in this work. The two main characters are conversing around a table, the painter having wanted to signify the action of thought, the speculative spirit that made possible the conquest of the air by man and the invention of airplanes. The representation of space also follows the breaks in the plane typical of Cubist paintings: each element of the painting has its own point of view and its own scale, so that the space represented in the canvas, discontinuous, does not reproduce reality.
The artwork in a nutshell
The conquest of the air fascinated many artists at the beginning of the 20th century because it was an echo of the new civilization that was emerging, of the speed, machines and factories that characterized it. Among these artists, Roger de La Fresnaye proposes his vision of the subject in this work. The two main characters are conversing around a table, the painter having wanted to signify the action of thought, the speculative spirit that made possible the conquest of the air by man and the invention of airplanes. The representation of space also follows the breaks in the plane typical of Cubist paintings: each element of the painting has its own point of view and its own scale, so that the space represented in the canvas, discontinuous, does not reproduce reality.
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Reproduction of The Conquest of the Air by Roger de La Fresnaye

