Girl with Blonde Hair, Helene Schjerfbeck (1916)
The scene plays with intimacy and distance. The thick blonde hair of the woman, who is deeply engrossed in reading, encases her like a protective cloak. At the same time, the viewer is warded off by it. The atmospheric depiction is composed of few fields of colour and by the interplay between opaque and translucent applications of paint. The Finnish artist thus emphasises the abstract tendencies of her work, in which she nonetheless always remains committed to figuration.
