Retrato de las demoiselles Louise y Berthe Godon (Portrait of the Demoiselles Louise and Berthe Godon)

Josep de Togores settled in Paris at the end of the First World War, leaving behind a body of landscape work influenced by Paul Cézanne to turn his attentions towards the human figure, primarily in portraits and nudes. It was at this time that he began to work with art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, a key figure in promoting Pablo Picasso and the Cubists. Kahnweiler commissioned the portrait of his wife and his sisters-in-law, the Godon sisters (Berthe Lascaux and Louise Leiris), which was displayed at the first exhibition he organised on Togores’s work at Galerie Simon in Paris in 1922. This double portrait shares some of the characteristics of Magic Realism, for instance the oppressive space without depth of field, clearly defined neoclassical drawing and a penchant for metallic tones; however, the absence of a component of estrangement, present in some of his other works, positions it more in line with German New Objectivity.

Raúl Martínez Arranz