Couple à la plage (Couple on the Beach)

In the summer of 1922, the return of Josep de Togores to Provence is evidenced in his art by the continuation of his figurative work in the classical style. During this period, Togores moves away from the harshness of the German New Objectivity movement, which he had approached in preceding years, to embrace the proposals of Catalan Noucentisme. Couple à la plage (Couple on the Beach) presents two foreshortened nudes over a neutral base, with a simple palette of earth tones that bring together the background of sand with the colour of the skin. It portrays these two condensed figures in precise, direct lines, playing with the identification between the territory and the figures. The treatment of light, which springs forth from the middle of the picture, underlines the corporeality and the forthrightness of their nudeness, which again reflects the Noucentista tendency to find inspiration in classical statuary. These figures are intense, rigid and static, and they span the totality of the painting; the faces are serene, in contrast to the heaviness of the bodies. Couple à la plage exemplies the celebration of the human body as the measure of the world, and the use of Arcadian and timeless scenes, a characteristic of the return to order prescribed by Noucentisme.

Reyes Carretero