semi-naïf

English

Adjective

semi-naïf (comparative more semi-naïf, superlative most semi-naïf)

1. Alternative form of semi-naive
   • 1978, Sidney Alexander, Marc Chagall: A Biography, New York, N.Y.: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, page 460:

     Marc Chagall comes from Vitebsk but has nothing Jewish about him in looks, in manner, in any peculiarities. Yet he paints almost nothing but ghetto life—and in a semi-naïf, rather childish fashion, does it with enough feeling to “put it over.”

   • 1979, Growing Point, page 3509:

     Drawings of a simple, semi-naïf type also stress the homely, almost accidental tenor of the re-tellings.

   • 1986, Studio International, page 44:

     Other Australian work which impressed included the semi-naïf paint-[…]

   • 2002, Tim Burford, Georgia with Armenia, Bradt Travel Guides, →ISBN, page 128:

     Up some steps behind the hotel the All Saints church was built in 1620–30 and is now being restored; it has new paintings in a nice light style and semi-naïf icons.

   • 2009, Natalie Adamson, Painting, Politics and the Struggle for the École de Paris, 1944–1964, Ashgate Publishing, →ISBN, page 136:

     Rebeyrolle’s semi-naïf, deliberately ugly and pathetic portraits, still lifes and rude examinations of the bestial world were hailed as a vital example of revelatory realism, admired in France as in England for their durable construction of quotidian objects and bulky bodies, suggesting the necessity of a committed return to drawing and modelling after the Old Masters.

   • 2014, Luisa Del Giudice, “Afterword: Personal Reflections on the Watts Towers Common Ground Initiative”, in Sabato Rodia’s Towers in Watts: Art, Migrations, Development, New York, N.Y.: Fordham University Press, →LCCN, page 344:

     Politi had actually made multiethnicity a focus of his art (before it became the norm) and showed a penchant for expressions of ethnically costumed festive celebration in a simple, even semi-naïf vein (appropriate to children’s literature).