云
1910-1912
Look up, because a massive, swirling cloud is about to swallow this entire rooftop scene! Henry Lyman Saÿen painted this around 1910 while soaking up the radical avant-garde energy in Paris. Instead of a boring, realistic sky, he gives us a turbulent, cotton-candy explosion of white, pink, and blue brushstrokes that completely dwarfs the quiet blue roofs and chimneys below. It’s a perfect snapshot of early modernism, where artists stopped just copying nature and started painting how the world felt—in this case, feeling very stormy and dramatic.