Lyanne began to concentrate on depicting the plight of older women in the early 1980s. Here, five elders with anguished expressions wear jewel-toned garments.
The title of this painting refers to both meanings of the word "façade." In one sense, it implies that older women often "put on a façade”—by wearing masks with different expressions—to shield others from their pain. The title also alludes to an architectural façade—the flat front of a building—because the figures crowd the picture plane.
As Lyanne wrote in her application for a fellowship that she received for this painting from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts in 1985:
The women usually appear in groups. They stand side by side, each related to each other by their juxtaposition, their ritual gestures and a pervading sense of loneliness. The façade each presents is remarkable only because it is so familiar.
