oil on canvas, 80×140 cm
signed and dated upper right U.P. Conti 1915
With this extraordinary Nude of a Boy , 1915, marked by Primo Conti’s fauve affair, comes to a close, and a new chapter opens, which this work suggests: a reinterpretation of the last Cézanne, in which the prismatic games of Cubism are foreshadowed. On the strength of his fauve experience and the fluid body of his brushwork, Conti’s relationship with the prism takes on aquatic-like refractions that radiate far beyond his own boundaries, thanks to the intensity of the chords found. Above all, a distinctly dreamlike sense of the mate ria treated is now coming to life. The theme of the awakening of the child is of Nordic and Symbolist origin; grafted onto it here is a reflection on Caravaggio’s Bacchus .
