MAURICE DE VLAMINCK (PARIS, 1876 – RUEIL-LA-GADELIÈRE, 1952) The Country Road Circa 1935 Oil on canvas 54 x 65 cm Signed lower left Wildenstein – Plattner certificate Here, the road takes the place of the main ‘character’. Tarmacked, straight and perfectly centred, it cuts through the composition, ignoring the few houses lining it, and draws us into an accelerated perspective towards the far recesses of the painting, towards an invisible destination. This main road speaks to us of modernity in interwar France, which was, little by little, being adorned with a brand-new road network. On either side, electricity pylons line its course, in turn supplying the current that powers the region. Paradoxically, only a single car travels along it, and it is not the car that gives us this impression of speed, but rather Vlaminck’s characteristic painterly touch, which races, flies and escapes us in the dotted band at the centre and, even more so, in its wild rendering on the right-hand verge. The sky, meanwhile, swept by turbulent clouds, evokes a raging sea. Therein lies the full dynamism of the canvas, depicting the chaos of nature, which only man manages to master, on land, through the grip of his infrastructure. This landscape is an ode to modernity, embodied by the car. The only architectural feature explicitly named in the title ‘AUTO’, the garage has now taken the place of the church of yesteryear.