Nu assis (Seated Nude) executed in 1929, at a time when the artist affirmed a constructed figuration informed by Cubism without ever submitting to it. 

The female body, shown seated, is marked by a restrained monumentality: volumes are simplified, forms are angular, and transitions between planes are deliberately abrupt. Gromaire favors an architectural approach to the body.

The palette, dominated by browns, muted reds, ochres, and grays, gives the composition a grave, mineral tone. These colors, applied in firm, flat areas, reinforce the impression of density and stability. The setting, made up of geometric elements, does not describe a real space: it contributes to the construction of the whole and places the figure in a silent, concentrated atmosphere.

Through his treatment of the nude, Gromaire offers a deeply personal vision of interwar figurative modernity:

“He builds his nudes like cathedrals,” the art critic Georges Boudaille would testify.

And if Gromaire erases or barely sketches his models’ facial expressions, it is so that the body can speak for itself in a pose as symbolic as it is architectural.

Gromaire’s “nude” is far more than a simple sensual representation; it is a continually renewed allegory of the bewitching beauty that imposes itself on both painter and viewer as an evident truth.