Draped screen attributed to José Maria Sert around 1920/30
Six-leaf screen painted on canvas fixed on a wooden frame, with canvas hinges.
Height 212 cm, leaf width 60 cm, total width 360 cm.
Oak stick sole added to the restoration.
No signature, no brand.
Blood-red theatrical draping, sometimes striped with white, is omnipresent in the work of the brilliant neo-baroque painter-decorator José Maria Sert, creator of numerous wall decorations and screens.
This “boudoir” or artist’s studio screen, painted in trompe l’oeil with great dexterity, is possibly a work from Sert’s workshop with which it has many similarities, both in terms of theme, spontaneous treatment, choice of colors and support. It may also be the work of an inspired follower justifying the cautious term “attributed” to Sert, but in all cases its creation dates from the 1920s/30s.
The only motif represented is this heavy drape with twisted folds, held to the wall by four gilded bronze pegs, held by a cord with a pompom at both ends to finish languidly curled up on the ground on the right side.
The composition is treated as a double trompe l’oeil, on the one hand the central subject of the drapery and its cast shadows standing out against a weathered gray wall, and, on the other hand, the whole representing a canvas fixed to the wall at its contours by square upholstery nails in gilded copper.
The plain gray back with simple decoration of stylized rosettes is typical of the 1925 Decorative Art style.