This major work by Alfred Manessier, who contributed to the revival of landscape painting in the 20th century, immerses us in a winter landscape by means of shapes and colours.

Alfred Manessier
Polders enneigés [Snow-covered polders]
1956
Oil on canvas
200 x 150 cm
FGA-BA-MANES-0001

Narrated by Adeline Lafontaine, Assistant curator Fine Arts Collection

"Polders enneigés(Snow-covered polders) is a typically Dutch winter landscape, with its mosaic of plots of land in contrasting colours. It is characterised by a panoramic vision that allows us to take in the entire composition as a whole, to explore its full extent, guided by the interplay of blocks of colour, voids and linear structures. It resonates with the work Printemps proche(Spring coming) in which the blissful sunny landscape is spiritualised through the reflections in the polders. Yet this is not a realistic representation: there is no perspective or hierarchy of planes, only the treatment of solid forms. Manessier thus deliberately transforms a received impression into abstract pictorial language."