Untitled (Olive Tree)

Edouard Pignon was a painter, designer, and illustrator, who was part of a circle of French avant-garde artists, including Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso. Despite an association with the French Communist Party, Pignon did not embrace hardline Socialist Realism after World War II, but rather maintained a looser, more expressive approach to figural representation. In the 1950s he produced thematic series, including a sequence of landscapes painted in southern France and Italy. “Untitled (Olive Tree)” dates to this period and demonstrates Pignon’s vigorous use of bold colors and energized forms at that time.