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Night in Bologna
1958
Paul Cadmus
Born: New York, New York 1904
Died: Weston, Connecticut 1999
egg tempera on fiberboard
50 3/4 x 35 in. (129.0 x 89.0 cm)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Gift of the Sara Roby Foundation
1986.6.87
Smithsonian American Art Museum
2nd Floor, North Wing
Night in Bologna is a dark comedy of sexual tensions played out on a stage of shadowy arcades. In the foreground, a soldier on leave throws off a visible heat that suffuses the air around him with a red glow. He casts an appraising look at a worldly woman nearby, who gauges the interest of a man seated at a café table. The gawky tourist is unaware of her attentions, and looks longingly at the man in uniform. Cadmus left the outcome unclear because he was more interested in the tangle of human instincts than in tidy resolutions. He once said that he would always rather paint "a novel" than "a short story."
Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006
Keywords
Architecture Exterior - detail - column
Cityscape - Italy - Bologna
Cityscape - time - night
Dress - uniform - military uniform
Figure group
painting
paint - tempera
fiberboard
About Paul Cadmus
Born: New York, New York 1904 Died: Weston, Connecticut 1999
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