Untitled, 1934–1935

This is a figurative painting made while Ray was enrolled at the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. At the school, Ray studied under Hans Hofmann himself, who taught students to structure the figure into basic planes. This approach is visible in the way Ray has divided up the subject, a woman sitting in a chair, into discrete units of color that form rounded and angular shapes. Hofmann’s theories of painting came out of his direct contact with European avant-garde artists, including Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso, yet he retained certain conventions of traditional European ateliers in his methods of instruction. For example, students worked from nature in his classes, including from models, still lifes, and the landscape. In this particular painting, we can see where Hofmann made delicate changes using paint from Ray’s own palette in the form of three thin-red brown lines, one above the breast with a sideways “V,” and then to outline the outside contours of the right arm and right knee. To create greater depth, he brushed in a dark stipple on the brown shape to the left to break up the brown plane and create horizontal movement back into depth. And two thin blue lines, one curve to the arm on the right, and one at lower left pushes the chair back.