Artworks
As Três Graças [The Three Graces]
painting
Date
1930
Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
91 x 72 cm
Painted shortly after her second return from Paris in 1929 second stay in Paris, in 1928-29, this work by Sarah Affonso, constitutes a unique case in her painting, generally more devoted to portraiture.
Sarah approaches this theme with a singular simplicity of means. Although using quite synthetic shapes, she nevertheless depicts the three graces with clearly individualized features. Their quite youthful looks and the pubescent aspect of their bodies are the reason for this untraditional representation of the three Graces. Being the only mythological theme known in Sarah's work, she places her three young women facing the viewer with candor. There is no tension between them, quite the contrary. None of them tries to win the viewer's attention over the other two. In fact, none of them tries to catch the viewer's eye. Even the apple, that was supposed to cause discord, and that is placed at the very center of the composition, at the heart level, becomes the heart of harmony, the axis that, once discovered, links the three of them.
More than three seducers who try to capture the male gaze, Sarah Affonso's three Graces do not pose for a spectator. The modesty they show (covering the pubic area) states their self-awareness. Like Adam and Eve after the bite of the apple, so did these three Graces just discover their female adult nature. The assumption of such discovery, of the moment when three girls become women and become aware of their own physical identity, is corroborated by the presence of the (apple) tree behind them.
In an innovative approach to a classic mythological theme, this work by Sarah Affonso takes the canon to a new level. Using a feminine perspective, she goes beyond the traditional depiction of the female body as a treat to the male gaze. She shows how a body is, above all, a field of discovery for the self.
EF
Sarah approaches this theme with a singular simplicity of means. Although using quite synthetic shapes, she nevertheless depicts the three graces with clearly individualized features. Their quite youthful looks and the pubescent aspect of their bodies are the reason for this untraditional representation of the three Graces. Being the only mythological theme known in Sarah's work, she places her three young women facing the viewer with candor. There is no tension between them, quite the contrary. None of them tries to win the viewer's attention over the other two. In fact, none of them tries to catch the viewer's eye. Even the apple, that was supposed to cause discord, and that is placed at the very center of the composition, at the heart level, becomes the heart of harmony, the axis that, once discovered, links the three of them.
More than three seducers who try to capture the male gaze, Sarah Affonso's three Graces do not pose for a spectator. The modesty they show (covering the pubic area) states their self-awareness. Like Adam and Eve after the bite of the apple, so did these three Graces just discover their female adult nature. The assumption of such discovery, of the moment when three girls become women and become aware of their own physical identity, is corroborated by the presence of the (apple) tree behind them.
In an innovative approach to a classic mythological theme, this work by Sarah Affonso takes the canon to a new level. Using a feminine perspective, she goes beyond the traditional depiction of the female body as a treat to the male gaze. She shows how a body is, above all, a field of discovery for the self.
EF