Le massacre des Innocents (Nicolas Poussin Improvisation)

• Year created: 2020

• Medium: oil on canvas

• Dimensions (cm): 132x174

This painting, Le Massacre des Innocents, reinterprets a harrowing biblical theme through a fragmented and abstract visual language. At its core, the composition depicts anguish and violence: a mother’s desperate gesture, an infant in peril, and figures caught in the chaos of brutality. The imagery shifts between figuration and distortion, capturing the emotional weight of loss and fear without relying on traditional realism.

Overlapping planes of vivid color—yellows, reds, purples, and blacks—slice through the scene, disrupting continuity and heightening the sense of rupture. These bold abstractions act like barriers and wounds across the canvas, both concealing and revealing the suffering beneath. The viewer is forced to navigate between fragmented forms, echoing the disorientation of violence itself.

The interplay between narrative detail and abstraction transforms the historical tragedy into a universal meditation on human cruelty and innocence lost. Rather than presenting a single clear moment, the painting captures the chaos of many at once, turning the biblical massacre into a timeless reflection on violence and despair.