Monique BARONI (1930–2016)

Title: Le Petit Café
Medium: Original color print
Edition: Signed and numbered 58/150
Dimensions: 54 × 45 cm (without margins); 65 × 50 cm (with margins)

Description and Critical Analysis of the Work

In Le Petit Café, Monique Baroni conveys with remarkable chromatic intensity the vibrant atmosphere of a popular meeting place. The composition teems with figures seated at tables, absorbed in conversation or lost in the collective murmur. The dense, animated space is traversed by a diffuse light that fragments forms and enhances the rhythmic interplay of color.

Reds, blues, and oranges dominate, clashing forcefully yet harmonizing in a delicate balance. Her brushwork, fragmented and generous, dissolves contours in favor of masses and color vibrations. The viewer’s gaze is not drawn to a central figure but instead drifts from one character to another, from face to silhouette, echoing the flow of humanity and the energy of the scene.

Baroni does not depict a specific café; rather, she delivers its essence: a space where presences merge, where daily life becomes pictorial material. The work oscillates between figuration and colorist impression, transforming the motif into a celebration of life in motion.

Biographical Note – Monique Baroni

Monique Baroni was born in 1930 and passed away in 2016. Trained in Paris, she established herself in the 1960s as a distinctive figure in contemporary French painting. She exhibited in numerous galleries in France and abroad, and participated in major salons where her work was noted for its expressive power and luminous palette.

Faithful to a figurative approach infused with expressionism, Baroni focused on themes of daily life: café scenes, markets, bustling crowds, urban or maritime landscapes. What distinguishes her work is the primacy of color—always vibrant—and the gestural freedom of her brushstroke, which imbues her compositions with an almost musical energy.

Alongside her oil paintings, she developed a strong body of printmaking, transposing the density of her colors and the freedom of her hand into the language of engraving and lithography.

Today, Monique Baroni remains a sought-after artist, whose works capture the very breath of life, balancing chromatic lyricism with a sensitive observation of the everyday world.