La Cloture or La Cloison

The painting La Clôture ou La Cloison (The Fence or The Partition) is made on a single canvas. It shows two women whose naked, orangey bodies, seen face-to-face, are separated by a fence consisting of a twisted, painted wooden post. The contours of one figure are more defined.

Several materials are combined in this work by Belgian artist Evelyne Axell. She uses Clartex, a type of polyester panel made in Brussels that she colours with enamel. This technique allows her to play with the effects of transparency and depth. Produced in 1967, this painting is part of a work imbued with feminine sensuality at a time of struggles for women's rights, freedom of expression and the sexual revolution. This struggle appears most notably through the movement of the bodies of the two figures, each pushing their knee against the fence that separates them.

The painting La Clôture ou La Cloison by Evelyne Axell, part of the Pinault Collection, was presented in 2014 at the “Femminilità Radicale” (“Radical Femininity”) show at the Gucci Museo in Florence.