La rue de Fustemberg - Juillet 2024 — Ink on Paper by Caroline Lopez

About This Artwork

Caroline Lopez builds her Paris drawings in two stages. She fills sketchbooks in city streets and squares, then returns to her studio to mix, overlay, and redraw those observations into recomposed views of the city. La rue de Fustemberg applies this process to a quiet street in the sixth arrondissement, directing attention to the architectural fabric that daily movement tends to pass without examining. Where her practice often redirects the eye upward through foliage, this drawing uses bare winter branches to frame — and open toward — the Haussmannian buildings behind. The work belongs to the Paris collection within the Mémoire Urbaine et Collective project.

The composition places bare-branched plane trees across the foreground. Their dark trunks and fine branching structure rise against the pale surfaces behind, creating a layered screen between the viewer and the architecture. Behind and through that screen, building facades occupy most of the picture surface: cream and grey stone walls, rows of windows with warm amber light, mansard rooftop profiles, and chimney forms in the upper register. A blue passage to the left opens toward sky. On the left building, historical lettering is incorporated directly into the architectural surface, adding a layer of reference to the street's past. Lopez uses bold, flat ink forms for the branches and precise line work for the architecture — window frames, shutters, and stone details rendered with the structural understanding of a trained interior architect. The paper functions as sky, air, and light throughout.