Le Pendule (The Timepiece) [plate 6]
Image not available — this artwork is under copyright
View on museum website →Medium
drypoint
Dimensions
plate: 20 x 19 cm (7 7/8 x 7 1/2 in.) sheet: 30 x 29 cm (11 13/16 x 11 7/16 in.)
Classification
Portfolio
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of the Estate of Moses and Ruth Helen Lasky, San Francisco, Harlan B. and Marshall R. Levine, Trustees
Accession Number
2005.144.1.6
Art Historical Context
**Le Pendule (Thepiece) [plate 6]** by Louis Marcoussis captures the artist's mastery of Cubist abstraction in a intimate drypoint etching from 1946. Marcoussis, a Polish-born painter and printmaker who thrived in Paris's avant-garde circles alongside Picasso and Braque, often explored fragmented forms and dynamic compositions. Created just after World War II—likely from plates prepared earlier, as Marcoussis passed in 1941—this plate 6 from a portfolio evokes the inexorable swing of time, its title hinting at introspection amid postwar reflection. Drypoint, Marcoussis's favored medium here, ...