Title of Artwork: “Boris Anrep in his Studio, 65 Boulevard Arago”

Artwork by Pierre Roy
Year Created 1949

Summary of Boris Anrep in his Studio, 65 Boulevard Arago by Pierre Roy

At a glance, this is portraiture: a painting of an imagined carved likeness. In it, Pierre Roy transforms his friend and colleague, mosaicist Boris Anrep, into stone. Roy achieves a sense of monumentality for the bust, which appears to tower over the studio behind it through a characteristic manipulation of perspective. Despite the solemnity and restraint of the painted sculpture, Roy’s perspective creates an odd effect similar to a cinematic zoom in which an object is suddenly brought into dramatic focus.