American Art Collaborative

This kaleidoscopic painting of the apartment complex where Langlais lived in Oslo, Norway (with his new wife, Helen, whom he married at the Norwegian embassy in January 1955) shows a Cubist influence. Langlais reduces the architecture to a series of flat colors and shapes, creating a geometric pattern that is modulated by individual window features, wedgelike shadows, and the stylized trees and shrubbery in the foreground. Langlais relished having four studios at his disposal in Oslo, including one in this apartment house, and he would migrate among them during the course of each day, carrying his paintings with him. This dynamic, restless working style became central to Langlais’s creative process.