Cicada Woods - Charles Ephraim Burchfield

Hyperrealism 1967-2012
<exchanging gazes> 5

Hyperrealism. 1967-2012

22 March to 9 June 2013

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Autor:: Tom Blackwell
Título:: Triumph Trumpet (detail)
Fecha:: 1977

Técnica:: Oil on canvas
Medidas:: 180 x 180 cm.
Ubicacion:: Private Collection, New York.
image © Tom Blackwell photo © Louis K. Meisel Gallery, New York

<exchanging gazes> 5: Interior Scenes. Women and Daily Life.

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From 26 February to 10 June 2013

Autor:: Nicolas Maes
Título:: The Naughty Drummer
Fecha:: c. 1655

Técnica:: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid. Nr. INV. 241 (1930.56)

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Cicada Woods

Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection

Autor:: Charles Ephraim Burchfield
Título:: Cicada Woods
Fecha:: 1950 and 1959

Técnica:: Watercolour, pencil and chalk on paper
Medidas:: 103 x 132 cm
Úbicacion:: Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Numero de inventario: INV. Nr. 484 (1980.70)

Cicada Woods, Charles Ephraim Burchfield

More information about this work

Charles Burchfield spent the summer of 1950 teaching at Ohio University in Athens and University at Buffalo, and could therefore have begun Cicada Woods in either place. The artist decided to retouch this watercolour in 1959, though a photograph of it in its previous state shows substantial differences with respect to the final work as it is known today.

The watercolour, painted in the large format that is so common in his output, is intended to recall the song of the cicada, that mysterious insect whose deafening song fills the air on late summer nights. The dense forest — enigmatic and impenetrable in most of Burchfield’s works — is made even murkier in the present painting by the rhythmic brushstrokes that imitate the repetitive chant of the cicadas. Even the clouds with their upward movement could also recall the pattern of an echo.

Paloma Alarcó

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