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Indepth Arts News:
"Fauve Painting 1905-7: The Triumph of Pure Colour"
2001-06-27 until 2001-08-27
Courtauld Institute of Art
London, ,
UK United Kingdom
The years 1905 to 1907 saw the full flowering of Fauvism and the exhibition will feature work by all its major protagonists
including Henri Matisse, Andre Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque and Raoul Dufy.
The exhibition is supported by the Courtauld Exhibition Patrons.
Fauves or wild beasts was the name given to the group of young artists whose exuberantly coloured
canvases were first shown to a stonn of controversy at the 1905 Salon dAutomne in Paris. Louis
Vauxcelles, one of the more progressive critics described the proximity of a relatively classical
sculpture to paintings by Matisse and his colleagues as -Donatello among the wild beasts - and the
name stuck although the Fauves were never a self-declared formal artistic movement.
Louis
Vauxcelles, one of the more progressive critics described the proximity of a relatively classical
sculpture to paintings by Matisse and his colleagues as -Donatello among the wild beasts - and the
name stuck although the Fauves were never a self-declared formal artistic movement.
In the early years of the 20th century avant garde taste was changing and had begun to react against
Impressionism. Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin were the new heroes to young artists and when the
first full-scale exhibition of works by Van Gogh was held in Paris in 1901, Vlaminck and Derain
were among those who were deeply impressed. In the summer of 1904, Matisse painted with Signac
in Saint- Tropez who stimulated his interest in pure colour and a resulting painting Luxe, Calme et
volupte shown at the Salon des Independants of 1905 in its turn greatly influenced Raoul Dufy .
During the summer of 1905 Derain joined Matisse in Collioure, a small harbour on the south-west
coast of France which was as important to the Fauves as Argenteuil had been to the Impressionists.
There the two artists worked hard and produced paintings of freely applied pure colour, several of
which were shown at the Salon d Automne. Among the works painted at Collioure that are featured
are La P/age Rouge by Matisse, one of four by him in the exhibition, and pecheurs a Collioure by
Derain. The striking red in the foreground together with the pinks, blues, greens and yellows chosen
by Matisse in his painting demonstrate his boldness in weaving together raw, powerful colours while
Derain s daring and dynamic composition uses pinks, reds, yellows, orange and greens augmented
by areas of white and black.
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