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selected works 1 8 9 0 – 1 9 73

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Pierre BONNARD Le Jardin de Paris (or Le Promenoir de café-concert) – 1902

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Louis ANQUETIN Torse de jeune fille, Juliette Var y – circa 1890

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André Derain Bateaux au port de Collioure – circa 1905

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Constantin Brancusi Femme au peigne (or Profil de femme au chignon) – circa 1912

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Chaïm Soutine Le Chemin montant à Cagnes (or Paysage de Cagnes) – circa 1923-1924

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Joan MirÓ Gouache-dessin – 1934

46

Francis Picabia Vénus – 1946

50

Nicolas de Staël Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange – 1954

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Pablo Picasso Nu et musicien assis – 1967

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Maurice Estève Montavent – 1963

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Maurice Estève Aquarelle 104-A – 1969

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Eduardo Chillida Dibujo tinta – 1973

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Le Jardin de Paris (or Le Promenoir de cafĂŠ-concert) 1902

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11

Pierre Bonnard, Le Jardin de Paris, detail.

Le Jardin de Paris apparaît en galerie pour la

première fois en 1904, et disparaît dans la sphère privée. Autant dire que c’est un tableau dont tout le monde parlait mais que personne n’avait vu. Nombre d’historiens de l’art se sont cassé le nez en essayant de deviner la place et l’importance de cette œuvre dans la production de Bonnard. Malgré tout, grâce à un prêt à long terme, le tableau fut présenté au Luxembourg de 1929 à 1931. À l’instar des œuvres de Picasso, de Miró ou de Braque... Il figurait parmi les œuvres qui dominaient la période moderne, alors que Bonnard a toujours fait fi de tout mouvement comme le cubisme. Il est de ce fait un tableau de musée par excellence. [...]

C’est un tableau qui remet en cause les idées reçues sur Bonnard, ce n’est pas une scène de plage, ni un paysage, ni une petite fille en train de regarder une tarte avec concupiscence. [...] Ce qui frappe au premier chef, c’est cette impression que l’on n’a pas un arrêt sur image mais quelque chose d’inhérent qui commence à apparaître à cette époque-là ; les groupes qui composent la foule, semblent se mouvoir dans tous les sens dans le plus pur des hasards, comme dominés par des impulsions bizarres ; c’est tout sauf une humanité portée par son destin.

Les personnages semblent déambuler dans un déambulatoire de théâtre. D’ailleurs, le sous-titre du tableau n’est-il pas Le Promenoir de café-concert !

C’est un peu comme si Bonnard avait voulu montrer dans un seul cadre une foule en train de se coaguler.

[Ici] Bonnard semble jouer de dérision, de sarcasme comme il l’a fait dans Ubu Roi de Jarry en 1896. Bref, c’est un tableau à énigmes pour historien de l’art.

Le Jardin de Paris appeared in a gallery for the first

time in 1904, and from there, it entered into private ownership; it is, therefore, a painting that everyone talked about but that no one had seen. A number of art historians have gone to great lengths to determine the place and the importance of this work in Bonnard’s œuvre. Thanks to a long-term loan, the painting was on display at the Luxembourg from 1929 to 1931. Like works by Picasso, Miró, and Braque... It was among the pieces that dominate the modern period, though Bonnard had always ignored movements such as cubism. It is therefore a museum painting par excellence. [...]

It’s a painting that challenges the received ideas on Bonnard, it’s not a scene at the beach, nor a landscape, nor a little girl greedily eyeing a tart. [...] What’s initially striking is that there is no freeze frame, but rather something inherent that began to emerge at around that time; the group that constitutes the crowd seems to be moving in all directions at once and completely randomly, as if driven by strange impulses. It’s anything but a humanity led by destiny. The characters seem to be wandering around as if in a theater lobby. And, in fact, the subtitle is Le promenoir du Café-Concert!

It’s as if Bonnard had wanted to show in a single frame a crowd solidifying.

[Here] Bonnard seems to play with derision and sarcasm, as he did so marvelously with Jarry’s Ubu Roi in 1896. In short, it’s a painting full of enigmas for art historian.

Guy Cogeval, Former President of Musée d’Orsay and Musée de l’Orangerie

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Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Le Jardin de Paris (or Le Promenoir de café-concert) The Garden of Paris

1902 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left Bonnard 1902 115 x 190 cm 45.7 x 74.7 in Provenance Ambroise Vollard, Paris (acquired directly from the artist prior to 1904) Private collection, France, by descent from the above Private collection, France, acquired from the above Exhibitions Paris, Grand-Palais, Salon d’Automne, October-November 1904, no. 114, p.

23 (as Promenoir de café-concert) Paris, Musée du Luxembourg, on long-term loan, March 1929-February 1931 Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Cents chefs d’œuvre des peintres de l’École de Paris, 1946, cat, no. 3 as Promenoir de music-hall

L i t e r at u r e Société du Salon d’Automne, Catalogue de Peinture, dessin, sculpture, gravure, architecture et arts décoratifs exposés au Grand Palais des Champs-Élysées, Paris, 1904, p.

23 (as Le Promenoir de café-concert, belongs to Ambroise Vollard) R. Marx, “Le Vernissage du Salon d’Automne”, in La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité : supplément à la Gazette des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 22 October 1904, p. 271 (as Le Promenoir de café-concert) R. Bouyer, “Expositions et Concours”, in Le Bulletin de l’Art Ancien et Moderne, Paris, 14 April 1906, issue no. 297, p. 118 (as Le Promenoir de café-concert).

Musée national du Luxembourg, Catalogue-Guide : Peintures, Mars 1929, Paris, 1929, p. 31 (as Le Promenoir) R. Rey, “Le nouveau Musée du Luxembourg”, in Bulletin des Musées de France, Paris, March 1929, issue no. 3, p. 44 (as Le Promenoir) A. Dezarrois, “Actualités : un événement”, in La Revue de l’Art Ancien et Moderne, 1929, illustrated p. 149 (as Le Promenoir)

G. Bazin, “Bonnard (Histoire de l’Art Contemporain) : Les Nabis”, in L’Amour de l’Art, Paris, April 1933, no. 4, p. 85, illustrated fig. 87 Jean Duché, “L’Amour à Paris”, in Formes et Couleurs, Paris, 1946, no. 2 (as Promenoir de music-hall; illustrated) R. Cogniat, Orientations de la peinture française de David à Picasso, Paris, 1950, p. 82 (as Promenoir de music-hall) Florent Fels, L’Art vivant de 1900 à nos jours, Geneva, 1950, p. 15, illustrated T. Natanson, Le Bonnard que je propose, Paris, 1951, illustrated pl. 15 (as Jardin de Paris, incorrectly dated 1896) J. Dauberville and H. Dauberville, Bonnard, Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre peint, 1888-1905, vol. I, Paris, 1965, no. 135, p. 174 (as Le Jardin de Paris, incorrectly dated 1896, illustrated).

Michel Terrasse, Bonnard du dessin au tableau, Paris, 1996, p. 44-45, illustrated (as Le Jardin de Paris, dated 1896)

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Pierre Bonnard

«L e Promenoir, de Pierre Bonnard, ne vient-il

pas, tout naturellement, succéder au Moulin de la Galette (ill. 1) de Renoir ? Dans trente ans enfin, ces œuvres n’auront-elles pas, de toute certitude, une célébrité égale à celle qui couronne aujour-d’hui les ainés qu’on vient de nommer. » 1 (“Pierre Bonnard’s Le Promenoir succeeds quite naturally to Renoir’s Moulin de la Galette (ill. 1), doesn’t it? In thirty years from now, as a matter of fact, this work will be the equal to its eldest that achieve remarkable success today, won’t it?”) 1 Robert Rey

of the Champs-Élysées and frequented by Parisian society at the turn of the 20th century. Also called Le Jardin de Paris, this cabaret was located behind the Palais de l’Industrie (today’s Petit Palais) in the square Ledoyen, and could have been identified by its distinctive semi-spherical lights, visible in the present work’s background. They were similar to the ones in the L’Alcazar d’Été (renamed the Pavillon Gabriel in the 1950s), on the other side of the Champs-Élysées (ill.2). Animated by an incredible rhythm and energy, this very large format work is probably Bonnard’s most ambitious representation of Parisian life during the Belle Époque.

Capturing the spirit of the time, Pierre Bonnard caught a glimpse of a changing world, a fragment of the new, Haussmanized, Paris that had radically transformed both the urban landscape and the way humans interacted, navigated, and experienced the city. Le Jardin de Paris, also known as Le Promenoir de café-concert, 1902, is a recently rediscovered masterpiece depicting the interior of one of the Parisian cabarets located in the gardens

Le Jardin de Paris is an inventive and colorful depiction of a bustling scene in the French capital.

Bonnard’s fascination with the city by night was shared by many other avant-garde artists, including Renoir, Degas, Manet, and Picasso (ill.3) as well as Toulouse-Lautrec and the other Nabis. The caféconcerts were places of social conviviality, temples of illusory pleasures, offering the artists a pretext

ill. 1

ill. 2

Auguste Renoir, Le Bal du

L’Alcazar d’Été,

moulin de la Galette, 1876,

circa 1890-1900.

Paris, Musée d’Orsay.

Le Jardin de Paris (Le Promenoir de café-concert), 1902

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N otes

1 Robert Rey, Chief Curator of the Musées nationaux, “Le nouveau Musée du Luxembourg”, in Bulletin des Musées de France, no. 3, Paris, March 1929,

to paint gallant scenes or, on the contrary, to depict characters confronted with solitude. The present work reflects a certain joie de vivre achieved through the sparing use of dark and bright tones and a strong sense of energy and humor. Bonnard’s artistic emotions express the gaiety of 1900 Paris – animated, alive, and good natured.

p. 44.

2 Jean and Henry Dauberville, Bonnard, p. 58.

3 Florent Fels, “Paris, fin de siècle” in L’Art vivant, Geneva, 1950, p. 15.

“Bonnard was very fond of the spectacle and of what were commonly called ‘the little incidents’ of Paris. He loved this restless and noisy crowd.” 2 The present painting shows the bustling interior of one of the most prominent music halls and cabarets of the French capital, Le Jardin de Paris. The venue was opened in 1884 on the Champs-Élysées by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who then opened the Moulin Rouge in 1889 – even running a shuttle between the two places. Le Jardin de Paris threw champagne-filled parties that featured famous can-can dancers such as Jane Avril, La Goulue, or Valentin le Désossé – accompanied by an orchestra of fifty musicians.

Jane Avril (ill. 4) wrote in Mes Mémoires (1933): “Every year, in the middle of May, Zidler re-opened Le Jardin de Paris. At the time, it was located behind the Palais de l’Industrie, which has now been replaced by the Petit Palais. It was a place of pleasure where all the beau monde met.

What crazy and brilliant evenings I spent there!

And what elegant ladies! The highest society went here. […] They were happy to offer little Avril, their Parisian Gavroche – as they called me – flowers, sweets, or fanfrelches, after applauding me for my dances.”

The bustle of the Parisian crowd and the wonderful vibrancy of the night scene is captured in the present work through dashes and patches of color

ill. 3

ill. 4

Pablo Picasso, Jardin de

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Jane

Paris, 1901, New York, The

Avril au Jardin de Paris, 1893,

Metropolitan Museum of

Los Angeles, The Los Angeles

Art.

County Museum of Art.

that depict standing figures in evening dress. In Jardin de Paris we meet ladies whose bare shoulders and cleavage are set off by formal evening gowns. “Bonnard recreated a festive atmosphere in his Jardin de Paris, where women caressed by feather boas, and under hats with ostrich plumes, laugh in the soft light of white globes arranged in strings of pearls.” 3 And yet, when we look more closely, we realize that many people in the crowd are there alone, which injects an element of isolation into the convivial whole. The viewer’s attention is then drawn to another key figure who seems to be the cabaret manager dominating the center of the composition. Positioned along the painting’s central axis, he is the only figure looking at the viewer, creating a relationship between himself and us, and thus

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Pierre Bonnard

bringing us inside the painting. The solitude of this figure working amid the surrounding crowd establishes a particular intimacy within this fast-paced environment that pitches the viewer into a layered visual and psychological experience.

those scenes is a triptych, one panel of which belongs to the Bemberg Foundation, La Terrasse de café, 1896 – also called Le Moulin Rouge (ill. 5). In it, you can see the illuminated facade of the Moulin Rouge at night in the background.”) 4

« Pierre Bonnard a représenté à plusieurs reprises dans sa vie les mystères de la nuit. Nombre de ses scènes sont nocturnes comme le triptyque dont un panneau appartient à la fondation Bemberg, La Terrasse de café de 1896, où l’on aperçoit, dans le fond, la façade du Moulin rouge plongée dans la nuit. » (“Several times, Pierre Bonnard presented what were to him the mysteries of the night. Among

In 1900, the French capital was still partly illuminated by gas; electricity was used only in the most populated areas of the city, but the magic of its vibrant light transformed the urban landscape and seduced the crowds. The spread of electricity profoundly changed Paris, increasing the power of the commerce, transport, catering, and entertainment industries. Light and speed radically modernized the night. Electricity became the religion of 1900s, and the night was its passion.

The myth of La Parisienne reigned throughout the entire 19th century, inspiring artists such as Achille Devéria, Henri Gervex, Jean Béraud... (ill. 6).

Any number of paintings representing elegant women filled the Salons at the end of the century.

Bonnard’s work was no exception.

ill. 5

ill. 6

Pierre Bonnard, Le

Jean Béraud, Les Belles de

Moulin Rouge or Place

nuit au jardin de Paris,1905,

Blanche,1896, Toulouse,

Paris, Musée Carnavalet.

Fondation Bemberg.

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ill. 7 Pierre Bonnard, L’Aprèsmidi bourgeois or La Famille Terrasse, 1900, Paris, Musée d’Orsay.

N otes

4 Guy Cogeval, 2019.

5 Germain Bazin, « Bonnard : les Nabis » in L’Amour de l’Art, April 1933, no. 4, p. 86.

In 1904, Ambroise Vollard exhibited Le Jardin de Paris at the Salon d’Automne. The year before, Bonnard’s famous L’Après-midi bourgeois (1900) had been exhibited at the Salon d’Automne (ill. 7), and the painting had so impressed Vollard that he ordered another version for himself. The scene shows the family of composer Claude Terrasse, Bonnard’s brother-in-law, in front of the house at Clos du Grand-Lemps (Isère), on a sunny afternoon.

From his Nabi period, Bonnard retained a taste for decorative staging and comical distortions. Humor is one of the dominant qualities of this work, mischievously titled L’Après-midi bourgeois. Like Le Jardin de Paris, this painting has an unusual format.

“What [Bonnard] paints is his life, that which surrounds him. For Bonnard, the world is only the setting for his life; he brings it back to himself.

His subject is the animation of the street and all the daily acts of bourgeois life, visible or secret, domestic animals, the joy of the city dweller in the countryside. Bonnard’s hedonism is not Renoir’s

pagan, anarchic joy; it is the peaceful happiness of a social class that has accepted, without having fully scrutinized them, social, cultural, political, and religious codes that work in its favor, a class that leads a quiet life enriched by the inheritance of an extensive culture and its inexhaustible possibilities of refined enjoyment.” 5 Prior to 1904, the present painting, also known as Le Promenoir de café-concert, was acquired by Ambroise Vollard, one of the most legendary and influential art dealers of the 20th century. He defied public taste with the first solo shows of Cézanne (1895), Picasso (1901), Matisse (1904), and Pierre Bonnard (1906). Vollard opened his first gallery in the rue Laffitte, in the heart of the Paris art world, in 1893, and that same year, Maurice Denis introduced him to Pierre Bonnard. « Vers 1893, Maurice Denis, qui avait remarqué la petite exposition que j’avais faite de dessins de Manet, en parla à ses amis. C’est ainsi que je fus mis

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Pierre Bonnard

Ill. 8 Pierre Bonnard, Portrait d’Ambroise Vollard au chat, circa 1924, Paris, Petit Palais.

Ill. 9 Pierre Bonnard, Un dîner chez Vollard (or La Cave de Vollard), 1907, private collection.

en rapport avec quelques-uns des Nabis : Bonnard, Roussel, Vuillard, et que j’obtins d’eux, d’abord des tableaux, et plus tard des illustrations pour mes livres quand je me lançai dans l’édition. » (“Around 1893, Maurice Denis was struck by a small exhibition of Manet’s drawings that I had organized and talked about it to his friends. He then put me in touch with some of the Nabis: Bonnard, Roussel, and Vuillard. Later, I got some paintings from them, and even later, illustrations for some of my books when I started publishing.”) 6 Ambroise Vollard was more Bonnard’s publisher than his dealer. “Vollard specialized more in the older works [...] of Renoir, Cezanne, Lautrec, Van Gogh, and Gauguin, as well as of Pissaro and Sisley. He left the young artists, even Bonnard and Laprade, to Druet and his neighbors, the Bernheim-Jeune.” 7 Nevertheless, the artist had a good relationship with Ambroise Vollard. He even painted two portraits of him. “I posed for painters other than Renoir and Cezanne – for Bonnard, in particular,

who did two portraits of me. But at his studio, I did not fall asleep because I always had a little cat on my lap, who was difficult to hold.” (ill. 8) 8 Bonnard was also a regular guest in the cellar at the Rue Lafitte (ill. 9). “Everyone has heard of this famous hypogeum. It was fashionable to be invited there for lunch or dinner. [...] With its white tiled walls, the cellar looked like a small monastic refectory. [...] Among the guests at these subterranean feasts were, first of all, a great number of pretty women, then M. Léon Dierx, prince of poets, the prince of sketch artists, M. Forain; Alfred Jarry, Odilon Redon, Maurice Denis, Maurice de Vlaminck, José Maria Sert, Vuillard, Bonnard, K.X. Roussel, Aristide Maillol, Picasso, Émile Bernard, Derain, Marius-Ary Leblond, Claude Terrasse, etc.” 9 It was in this cellar that Bonnard and Vollard decided to work together on several publishing projects.

Vollard commissioned him to do the lithographs for a few albums, including Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris (1895-1899), Parallèlement (1900), and Daphnis et Chloé (1902). Created over the course

Le Jardin de Paris (Le Promenoir du café-concert), 1902

N otes

6 Ambroise Vollard, Souvenirs d’un marchand de tableaux, 1936, p. 236.

7 Eugène Blot, Histoire d’une collection de tableaux modernes. 50 ans de peinture (de 1882 à 1932), 1934, p. 25.

of several years, the series Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris (ill. 10) was published as a luxury album, produced in an edition of one hundred and printed on fine wove paper. It features a variety of compositions, from narrow, compressed views of streets or squares to more sweeping urban vistas of boulevards, parks, or bridges. The streets of Paris served Bonnard as a colourful source of inspiration. His fascination with the spectacle of urban modernity is very apparent in Le Jardin de Paris, and the series Quelques aspects de la vie de Paris is one of his first works that treats this subject in detail.

8 Ambroise Vollard, ibid.

9 Guillaume Apollinaire, Le Flâneur des deux rives, 1918.

10 Pierre Bonnard, exhibition catalogue, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, 1948, .

11 Quoted in Michel Terrasse, Bonnard : du dessin au tableau, 1996.

The album demonstrates Bonnard’s idiosyncratic image of the city as continually shifting between close, crowded encounters on the sidewalk and more distant, detached, often elevated views, in which he used color sparingly for strategic highlights and tonal variation. “Bonnard set out to capture in his work what no other painter of his time had observed: the little incidents of Parisian life. He went down into the streets and the

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squares, watching people, horses, dogs, and trees with equal interest. Broad avenues, busy street vendors, and cafés on sidewalks offered him their intricate patterns, their noisy agitation.” 10 In the 1890s, Bonnard’s painterly aesthetic lent itself to printmaking and because of his gifts, he received numerous important print commissions.

It was precisely these graphic works that shaped his early approach to painting. “Color lithography taught me a lot about painting. When we had to achieve a full range of tones through only four or five colors blended and overlapped, we discovered many things.” 11 Bonnard’s art was, in many ways, formed by Lautrec, Degas, and Japanese art.

In 1891, Pierre Bonnard exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants. The same year, his first poster appeared, done for the brand France-Champagne. The poster, as a form, had developed rapidly after the law of 29 July 1881 declared the “freedom of the press” and of public display. But the most famous poster of the cabaret was created by Lautrec in 1891, commissioned

by Charles Zidler for the Moulin Rouge. Its success encouraged Lautrec to create more posters and to work more broadly in lithography. Between 1891 and 1900, he created 31 posters and nearly 325

ill. 10 Pierre Bonnard, Quelques aspects de la vie parisienne, 1895-1899, Paris, Petit Palais.

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Pierre Bonnard

ill. 11 Pierre Bonnard, France-Champagne, 1881.

lithographs, which introduced him to a much wider audience. Because of his admiration for Bonnard’s France-Champagne poster (ill. 11), Lautrec arranged a new commission for Bonnard from the printer Ancourt, the first Bonnard had received from him.

He was paid one hundred francs, and it made him decide to devote himself to painting. The young artist took hold of his life and began a study of all known art movements. He captured unexpected, comical, and charming subjects in compositions as lively as snapshots.

Bonnard’s work also showed the strong influence of Japanese art, which had a significant influence on many artists during the second half of the 19th

century, coming to a peak during the 1890s. Its impact was most strongly felt in his compositions, which were often angular and off-center (ill. 12).

Many people do not understand his style and only see in it a desire to shock the public. In fact, it was a passion for movement that led artists in the 1900s to adopt rising compositions in which the horizontal plane shifts onto the vertical plane of the painting.

Classical perspective, established by the Renaissance, is an abstract science that bends the outside world to a conventional geometric scheme.

Degas, Lautrec, and Bonnard were all passionately interested in movement and engaged perspectives that incorporated multiple points of view.

This approach has its origins in Asian art and was practiced by primitives before linear perspective was imposed by the Renaissance. Japanese art was not the only influence that led to mobile perspective; the artists of 1900s wanted to capture the spirit of their time and to reveal the fleeting nature of modern life as the newly transformed city similarly transformed human society and its interrelationships.

Bonnard was fascinated by the various kinds of social exchanges that can be disclosed by the micro-movements of the eye, which redirect our attention.

This approach was used later by photographers such as Henri Cartier-Bresson, though Bonnard was careful to distinguish his own approach from photography, saying in 1927: “The [camera] lens records unnecessary lights and shadows, but the artist’s eye adds human values to objects and reproduces them as seen through human eyes. And this vision is mobile. And this vision is variable. I am standing

ill. 12 Utagawa Hiroshige, Cherry Blossom Day on the Nakanocho of the Yoshiwara, from the series “Famous Places in Edo”, circa 1840-1848, Chicago, Chicago Art Institute.

Le Jardin de Paris (Le Promenoir du café-concert), 1902

N otes

12 Pierre Bonnard, quoted in C. Terrasse, Bonnard, Paris, 1927, p. 162.

13 G. Geffroy, “Revue de 1896 exposition chez Durand-Ruel”, quoted in T. Hyman, Bonnard, London,

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in a corner of the room near a table bathed in sunlight. Distant masses look almost linear, without volume or depth. Close objects, however, rise up toward my eyes. The sides run straight. The vanishing point lies sometimes a long a straight line (in the distance) and sometimes along a curved one (in the foreground). The distance looks flat. It is the foreground that gives us our concept of the world as seen through human eyes, a world of undulations, or convexities or concavities.” 12

1998, p. 39.

Early cinema also offers an illuminating framework for understanding Bonnard’s urban scenes; it could present the kinds of spontaneous street interactions that drove the young Bonnard’s visual imagination. He was indeed well aware of cinema and its revolutionary capacity to capture the movement and spontaneity of everyday life. He was introduced to the first filmmakers in France, Louis and Auguste Lumière, via his brother-in-law, the composer Claude Terrasse. The Lumière brothers were regular guests at the family property in Le Grand-Lemps, where Bonnard spent considerable time. The Lumière brothers’ first films are largely set in major cities, tracking the hustle and bustle of metropolitan traffic and pedestrians. Key to the fascination of the Lumière brothers’ urban films – both then and now – is their spontaneity, especially their inevitable involvement of passersby who often seem to realize that they are being filmed only as it is happening. (ill.13) Bonnard’s carefully constructed compositions impart a range of “human values” to his pictures, from intimacy to menace, amusement to satire, empathy to critique. In 1896, the critic Gustave Geffroy called Bonnard’s scenes of Paris “charmingly malicious” with “a touch of impudent gaiety”. 13

ill. 13 Image from La Foule (The Crowd), black-and-white silent film, 48’’, directed by Marius Sestier, produced

by Auguste and Louis Lumière (3 November 1896, Melbourne), Paris, Centre national du Cinéma, Bibliothèque nationale de France.

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Pierre Bonnard

Some of Bonnard’s major compositions are related to the city’s night life, to its café-concerts and theaters, which attracted so many avant-garde artists – Degas, then Toulouse-Lautrec and the Nabis. Teeming places of social interaction, always the site of transitory pleasures, the café-concerts gave the artists the pretext to paint gallant scenes or lonely ones focused on characters confronted with the solitude of alcohol; the melancholy heroine of Degas’ L’Absinthe (ill. 14) offers a good example.

such as the iconic paintings of Manet, Un Bar aux Folies-Bergère (ill. 15), Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec, Au Moulin-Rouge: la danse (ill. 16), Le Jardin de Paris was exhibited for the first time at the Salon d’Automne in 1904 under the title Le Promenoir de café-concert; it was then shown at the Musée du Luxembourg from 1929 to 1931, on long-term loan, and then at an exhibition of School of Paris masterpieces at the Galerie Charpentier in 1946.

In line with the great impressionist and postimpressionist depictions of modern life, and particularly the Parisian café-concerts and music halls,

Since then, it has been out of the public eye for more than seventy years. With its recent rediscovery, Le Jardin de Paris will most certainly attain the status of an icon, joining other similar significant works by his contemporaries. ––

ill. 14

Ill. 15

Ill. 16

Edgar Degas, L’Absinthe,

Édouard Manet, Un bar

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,

1875-1876, Paris, Musée

aux Folies-Bergère, 1882,

Au Moulin-Rouge : la danse,

d’Orsay.

London, The Courtauld

1890, Philadelphia, The

Gallery.

Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Louis Anquetin André Derain Constantin Brancusi Chaïm Soutine Joan Miró Francis Picabia Nicolas de staël Pablo Picasso Maurice Estève Eduardo Chillida

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Louis Anquetin (1861-1932)

Torse de jeune fille, Juliette Var y Torso of a Girl, Juliette Var y

Circa 1890 Gouache on paper Signed lower right L. Anquetin 79.5 x 49.5 cm 31.3 x 19.5 in The authenticity of this gouache was confirmed by the Brame and Lorenceau gallery on 16 February 2018.

Provenance Filloux collection, Nice Private collection, Paris R e la t e d w o r k Paris, galerie Brame et Lorenceau, Anquetin, la passion d’être peintre, 26 March-20 April 1991, no. 15, repr. p. 47 and on the cover (an oil on canvas of the same composition, but of smaller size 75.5 x 60.3 cm, held in a private collection in Paris)

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Louis Anquetin

A native of Normandy, Anquetin joined the studio

of the painter Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) in Paris in 1882 and soon became friends with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, accompanying him on his visits to cabarets in Montmartre.

They then both went on to study with the academic artist Fernand Cormon, whose studio became a veritable crucible for young talent, attracting artists such as Émile Bernard and Vincent van Gogh. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec said that no painter since Manet had been as gifted as Anquetin.

This gouache, presented to the public for the first time, is a perfect example of cloisonnisme, of which Louis Anquetin was a leading master. It’s a pictorial technique that consists of painting patches of color separated by a darker line, as in cloisonné enamels or Japanese prints. In this piece, Anquetin used dramatic contrasts to emphasize the young woman’s milky complexion and reinforce the cloisonné principle in the background pattern.

The writer Édouard Dujardin, commenting on Anquetin’s work in the 1888 Salon des Indépendants in the Revue indépendante, baptized this new technique cloisonnisme and declared Anquetin its inventor, which brought the artist a considerable recognition that only grew over time.

Louis Anquetin’s studio in 1891-1892, with the Portrait de Juliette Vary on the wall.

Torse de jeune fille, Juliette Vary, circa 1890

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A year later, Anquetin received further admiration for his works in the impressionist and synthetist exhibition at the Café Volpini, which was organized by his friend Paul Gauguin. That same year, Félix Fénéon commented on the « teintes plates et intenses [et les] contours infranchissables » (“flat, intense colors and the absolute contours”) of Anquetin’s paintings.

Torse de jeune-fille, Juliette Vary underscores the timeless and delicate qualities of the model, to whom Anquetin was much attached. It shares traits with japonisme: the dark wood of the tree and the exotic flowers in the background, the hair tied back low on the neck, and the marked use of cloisonné.

Louis Anquetin, Torse de

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec,

jeune fille, oil on canvas,

Juliette Vary, 1888, Albi,

75.5 x 60.3 cm, Paris,

Musée Toulouse-Lautrec.

private collection.

The model for this gouache was Juliette Vary, a young woman who lived in the same street as Toulouse-Lautrec. He noticed her and asked her parents to let her pose for him. He did several portraits of her, beginning in 1888, when she was 17 years old. She became Anquetin’s favorite model as well. ––

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André Derain (1880-1954)

Bateaux au port de Collioure Boats in Collioure Harbor

Circa 1905 Oil on canvas Signed lower right Derain

March 1966, no. 23, illustrated; this exhibition later travelled to Munich, Haus der Kunst, March-May 1966

46.3 x 38 cm 18.2 x 15 in

Recklinghausen, Städtische Kunsthalle, Zauber des Lichtes, JuneJuly 1967, no. 52

Provenance Galerie Louis Manteau, Brussels Georges Daelemans collection, Brussels, acquired before 1952 Private collection, Brussels Christie’s London, 4 February 2015, lot no. 3 Private collection, Brussels Exhibitions Paris, Musée national d’Art moderne, L’École de Paris dans les collections belges, July-October 1959, no. 38 Paris, Galerie Charpentier, Les Fauves, 1962, no. 33 Paris, Musée national d’Art moderne, Le Fauvisme français et les débuts de l’Expressionisme allemand, January-

Edinburgh, Royal Scottish Academy, Derain, August-September 1967, no. 16, illustrated; this exhibition later travelled to London, Royal Academy, September-November 1967 Mechelen, Cultureel Centrum Burgemeester Antoon Spinoy, Fauvisme in de Europese kunst, September-November 1969 Charleroi, Palais des Beaux­-Arts, La grande époque de Montparnasse, January-February 1973, no. 18 L i t e r at u r e S. Whitfield, Fauvism, New York, 1992 M. Kellermann, André Derain, Catalogue Raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Paris, 1992, no. 51, p. 32

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André Derain

As soon as he arrived in Collioure in 1905, Matisse

fell under the town’s spell. He was amazed by the intensity of the luminous beauty radiating from the small fishing port; it was a view that would also enchant Derain, Braque, and Vlaminck. Henri Matisse wrote: « Il n’y a pas en France de ciel plus beau que celui de Collioure [...]. Je n’ai qu’à ouvrir les volets de ma chambre et j’ai toutes les couleurs de la Méditerranée chez moi. » (“Nowhere in France is there a sky more beautiful than that in Collioure […] I only need to open my shutters, and I have all the colors of the Mediterranean in my room.”) The town and the surrounding region became one of Fauvism’s signature subjects.

In 1905, Derain’s parents were pressuring him to give up painting, which threw him into a period of deep loneliness and discouragement. Matisse’s invitation, in July of that year, to visit him in Collioure offered him a valued escape. Together, they painted the landscapes around the town, inspired by the warm light that emphasized the vivid colors of the countryside of the south of France.

They abandoned then fully the conventions and traditional rules of coloration. Bateaux au port de Collioure is one of a series of foundational works that Derain did in Collioure in 1905. These works are composed principally in primary colors and executed with thick, determined brushstrokes.

Collioure harbor.

Bateaux au port de Collioure shows a view of the Collioure harbor, which Derain painted several times. The masts of the boats, arranged in long, vibrant orange lines, meld into the blue of the sea.

The boats, with the sea reflected in their hulls, seem to be in motion, and you can almost feel the effort it takes the people on the seafront to keep on going under the oppressive heat. Derain seems to have painted this work quickly with a vibrant and assured attention, applying the colors directly from the tube onto the canvas in impulsive strokes.

The ochre of the canvas plays an integral role in the composition and emphasizes the bursts of color.

Though Derain and Matisse were very close in 1905, they were not the only influences on each other’s work at the time. Derain’s work, in particular, was enriched by his friendship with the painter Maurice de Vlaminck, and their encounters were intel-

Bateaux au port de Collioure, circa 1905

lectually stimulating for them both. Derain and Vlaminck had gone together to see the 1901 Van Gogh exhibition at Galerie Bernheim, which had a strong influence on the work of the Fauves. It was at that exhibition that Derain introduced Vlaminck to Matisse, and thus the core trio of the Fauvists was concretized under the auspices of van Gogh.

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1 André Derain, lettre à Maurice de Vlaminck.

However, this initial connection didn’t last very long – in 1901, Derain began his military service, and Vlaminck, who stayed in the country in Chatou, fell out of touch with Matisse for a while, though Derain continued to write frequently to Vlaminck about painting and about color. In 1901, he wrote: « Quant à la peinture, je suis conscient que la période réaliste a cessé. » (“As for painting, clearly, the realist period is over.”). It was Derain’s way of expressing his conviction that a new era for painters had begun.

When he finished his military service in 1904, he went to join his friend Vlaminck in Chatou. That same year, Matisse was exhibiting his paintings with Ambroise Vollard, and he introduced his dealer to

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Derain. Vollard was deeply impressed by his work; he arranged a studio for Derain in 1905 and then commissioned him a series of paintings of London.

A new consciousness guided their experiments from that moment on; informed by an essential primitivism, it was above all charged with psychological engagement, intentional un-learning, and a return to a certain candor that freed them from conventions and allowed them to approach painting with a new eye.

They remained avidly interested in making new pictorial discoveries and in sharing them in new encounters. This new communal consciousness and the collaborations and exchanges between artists were determining elements of Fauvism. They brought an innovative optimism to the mix, an optimism that, without breaking with tradition, liberated a deep, personal creativity.

In 1905, Derain stayed in Collioure from 5 July to 28 August and created a large and iconic body of Fauvist work, including some 30 paintings and 20 drawings. –– « En effet, ce pays-ci [...] ce sont des bateaux, des voiles blanches, des barques multicolores.

Mais, surtout, c’est la lumière. Une lumière blonde, dorée qui supprime les ombres : [...] Tout ce que j’ai fait jusqu’ici me semble stupide. » 1 (“Indeed, this country [...] it is boats, white sails, multicoloured boats. But, above all, it is the light. A blonde, golden light which erases shadows: [...] Everything I’ve done so far seems stupid to me.” ) 1

André Derain, Portrait d’Henri Matisse, 1905, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

André Derain

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Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957)

Femme au peigne (or Profil de femme au chignon) Woman with a Comb (or Profile of a Woman with a Hair Bun)

Circa 1912 Gouache on paper Signed lower right C. Brancusi 49 x 37 cm 19.3 x 14.5 in The authenticity of this work was confirmed by Margit Rowell, on 4 January, 2018.

Provenance H.R.H. the Maharajah of Indore, Yeshwant Rao, called Rao Henri-Pierre Roché, Paris Private collection, Paris, by descent Private collection, Paris Exhibitions This work has been requested

by Doïna Lemny, “Attachée de Conservation” at Musée national d’Art moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and curator for the exhibition Brancusi, la sublimation de la forme, to be held at Bozar in Brussels from 1 October 2019 to 12 January 2020.

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Constantin Brancusi

T

he delicate gouache of a bowed female head Femme au peigne is a rare painted work on paper

by Brancusi, whose entire non-sculptural œuvre numbers less than two hundred pieces, primarily portraits of women and nudes.

He almost never drew preliminary studies for his sculptures, but most are independent aesthetic explorations. Brancusi prized these works enough to show them in formal exhibitions, first at gallery Brummer in Paris and later in New York. Although Brancusi’s paintings and drawings demonstrate an approach to form entirely consistent with his sculptural œuvre, these graphic media encouraged a far greater gestural liberty than wood, stone, or bronze.

Femme au peigne was painted circa 1912, in the midst of a brief, decisive period in which Brancusi attained the elemental purity of form that would define his signature modernist achievement for his entire career. As in his sculpture, Brancusi often painted and drew in series of variations, with a marked tendency toward simplification as he moved through a theme. “In his drawings, Margit Rowell has written, Brancusi provides significant clues as to his vision and his priorities” 1 The present gouache is one of three paintings and at least three drawings in which Brancusi explored the motif of a young woman in profile, her gaze cast downward, her head and neck forming a single, smooth arc.

In 1910 Brancusi met Margit Pogany, a young Hungarian woman which became his muse for the following years. He made various versions of her sculpted portrait, among them, a marble, Mademoiselle Pogany, version I, from 1912 in the

Mademoiselle Pogany, version I, 1912, white marble, limestone block, Philadelphia, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Our gouache, painted circa 1912, was probably from the same inspiration. This posture of self-absorption recalls the sculptor’s Muses series that he started early 1910’s, searching to reach the essence of the woman figure, beginning with Femme se regardant dans un miroir of 1909, which he radically re-carved six years later as the notorious Princesse X. « C’est la femme, la synthèse même de la femme, c’est l’Éternel féminin de Goethe, réduit à son essence. » (“It is ‘Woman,’ the very synthesis of Woman, it is the eternal female of Goethe, reduced to her essence.”) 2, he explained of the latter work, infuriated when Picasso linked it to a phallus.

In the present gouache, Brancusi has rendered the model’s head and neck in pale, luminous hues that suggest the way that skin – or marble – catches the light. The curly black hair, piled atop the head, provides a striking contrast in both tone and graphic incident.

Femme au peigne (or Profil de femme au chignon), circa 1912

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1 Constantin Brancusi, exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995, p. 287.

2 Ibid., p. 138.

This gouache belonged to Henri-Pierre Roché who was a French collector and art dealer, as well as an art critic and writer. He was a key figure in the Parisian bohemian literary and artistic world of Montmartre and Montparnasse, and his articles appeared in the most incisive journals, such as the Ermitage and Vers et Prose. He was a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, and Blaise Cendrars, as well as of many visual artists, including le Douanier Rousseau, Brancusi, Soutine, Braque, and Diego Rivera. He introduced Gertrude and Leo Stein to modern art when, beginning in 1905, he sold them paintings by Picasso. He had a romantic relationship with Marie Laurencin when she was very young and was her first collector. He introduced her to Paul Cassirer and Paul Rosenberg, and, in Berlin, to Alfred Flechtheim, who open doors for her that led to her success. And it was him, who, in 1917, sold her painting Le Zèbre to the millionaire lawyer John Quinn.

That same year, he was sent as part of a diplomatic mission to New York, where he met Gaston Gallimard, Man Ray, Picabia, and Marcel Duchamp, with whom he remained friends; together they founded the Dada review The Blind Man, in which Duchamp theorized the readymade. He went back to New York in 1920; during that trip John Quinn commissioned him to create a collection including, among others, Brancusi, Matisse, and Picasso, which gave him the opportunity to learn all the secrets of the art dealer’s trade.

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he was able, with Duchamp’s help, to buy the 30 pieces by Brancusi that were in his collection and re-sell them in the following years.

After the death of his mother in 1929, Henri-Pierre Roché became the confidant of Yeshwant Rao, known as Bala, the son of H.R.H. the Maharajah of Indore, who lived in Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Roché had met the young prince several years earlier when he’d served as an intermediary for a full-length portrait commissioned from Boutet de Monvel. He took charge of the prince’s artistic education and accompanied him on his travels.

He also introduced him to Brancusi, whose “birds” series immediately intrigued him. In 1932, Roché suggested a black marble version of L’Oiseau, which the prince bought for the considerable sum of 250 000 francs.

In 1934, Roché took Bala and his young wife to Brancusi’s studio, where he viewed the sculptor’s plans for Le Temple de l’amour, in which the couple’s collected works would be positioned around a small body of water. The works included the black marble L’Oiseau, another that Brancusi would do in white marble, a third in bronze, and the Colonne du baiser. The death of the maharani the following year unfortunately turned the prince away from the project. ––

Upon returning to Paris, he reconnected with old friends, in particular, Marcel Duchamp, but also Gris, Picasso, Brancusi, Braque, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau, and Erik Satie, whom he introduced to Gertrude Stein. When John Quinn died in 1924,

Bernard Boutet de Monvel, H.R.H. the Maharadjah of Indore, 1934, oil on canvas, private collection.

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Chaïm Soutine (1893-1946)

Le Chemin montant à Cagnes (or Paysage de Cagnes) The Uphill Road in Cagnes (or Landscape in Cagnes)

Circa 1923-1924 Oil on canvas Signed lower left Soutine

Milan, Galleria Bargamini, I dipinti della collezione Castaing, March-April 1987, ill.

55.2 x 38.1 cm 21.7 x 15 in

Japan, travelling exhibition (Tokyo, Odakyu Museum, 18 November 1992-7 December 1993; Nara, Nara Sogo Museum, 27 January-21 February 1993; Ibaraki, Kasama Nichido Museum, 5 March-4 April 1993; Hokkaido, Hokkaido Museum of Modern Art, 10 April-16 May 1993) Chaim Soutine Centenary Exhibition, no. 45, p. 144, ill. p. 75

Provenance Mrs David Smart, New York, until 1973 Marlborough Gallery, New York (1973-1982) Perls Galleries, New York (1982) Private collection, Monaco Exhibitions New York, Marlborough Gallery, Soutine, 1973 Travelling exhibition (Munich, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschite, 13 December 1981-28 January 1982; Tübingen, Kunsthalle, 26 March-31 May 1982, London, Hayward Gallery, 14 July-22 August 1982; Lucern, Kunstmuseum, 31 August-31 October 1982) Chaïm Soutine 1893-1943, no. 45, p. 244, p. 188, ill.

Paris, Pinacothèque de Paris, Soutine, 10 October 2007-27 January 2008, no. 43, ill. p. 120 L i t e r at u r e Coronet, February 1937, p. 13 (ill.)

Maurice Tuchman, Esti Dunow, Chaïm Soutine Catalogue Raisonné Part I, Cologne, Taschen, 2001, pp. 242-3, no. 116, ill. (titled Paysage à Cagnes) “Soutine la fin du mythe”, special issue Connaissance des Arts, no. 653, Paris, October 2007, ill. p. 82

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Chaïm Soutine

O

riginally from Lithuania, Soutine was one of the most important members of the School of Paris.

Upon his arrival to Paris in 1913, he moved into La Ruche and then to the studio of the sculptor Mietschaninoff in the Cité Falguière, where he met Lipchitz, who introduced him to Modigliani.

Soutine first tasted success at the beginning of the 1920s, when he participated in several exhibitions and some of his pieces were bought by collectors such as Léon Zamaton and Émile Lejeune. But it was above all Dr. Barnes who assured his financial security when the doctor and collector from Philadelphia bought more than 50 of his canvases through Paul Guillaume and Zborowski in 1922.

The following year, Paul Guillaume organized an exhibition of a selection of the works that Dr. Barnes had acquired, including pieces by Soutine, Van Gogh, Picasso, Matisse, and Daumier, and published the first article dedicated to Soutine in his journal Les Arts à Paris.

Zborowski sent him, once more, to Cagnes, a place that Soutine grew to detest: « Je voudrais quitter Cagnes, ce paysage que je ne peux supporter. » (“I want to leave Cagnes, a landscape I can’t stand.”), he wrote to his dealer. 1

Leopold Zborovski and Chaïm Soutine, circa 1926-1927.

Soutine spent two years in the South of France, from 1923 to 1924. During this intense period,Soutine made many trips between Paris, Céret, and Cagnes and painted over two hundred landscapes, among them different versions of Vue de Cagnes (Paris, Musée national d’Art moderne), Paysage de Cagnes (Chicago, Art Institute), Paysage de Cagnes avec arbre (Londres, Tate Modern), Arbre de Vence, Le Village (Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie) and, of course, Chemin Montant à Cagnes, all marked by a distortion of pictorial space and violent gestures and colors.

Le Chemin montant à Cagnes (or Paysage de Cagnes), circa 1923-1924

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His colour palette perceptibly lightened during these two years.

1 cited by Jean Leymarie and Marcellin Castaing in Soutine, Paris, Bibliothèque des arts, 1963, p. 22.

2 Willem De Kooning in Quest 77, March-April 1977.

In the canvas presented here, it’s the distortion of the landscape that first strikes the eye, both of the painter and of the viewer. An overall instability works with the curving motion of the gestures, absorbing the forms into a spiral of thick paint that threatens them with disappearance. The frontal composition of Chemin Montant à Cagnes creates a screen. The blinding luminosity of the pure and vibrant colors contrasts with the landscapes from Céret, and their tumultuous depth and somber tones. The village here is bathed in light, lush green trees are framing the ocher stairs, that lead us to a deep but light blue sky. The composition is more stable here than in Céret. For Soutine, it all happens on the surface, which remains in a permanent tension. This same immediacy appears later in New York with the Abstract Expressionists, and De Kooning in particular. –– “I’ve always been crazy about Soutine – all of his paintings. Maybe it’s the lushness of the paint. He builds up a surface that looks like a material, like a substance. There is a kind of transfiguration, a certain fleshiness in his work” 2 Willem De Kooning

Paysage de Cagnes avec arbre, circa 1925, London, Tate Modern.

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Joan Miró (1881-1946)

Gouache-dessin Gouache-drawing

1934 Gouache and pencil on paper Signed, dated and titled on the reverse Joan Miró / Août 1934 / « gouache-dessin » 69.9 x 104.8 cm 27.5 x 41.2 in The authenticity of this drawing was confirmed by Joan Miró himself on 19 October 1953, and also by the ADOM, on 2 November 2011.

Provenance Galerie Jacques Benador, Geneva Victor Valera, France Carlos Raul Villanueva, Caracas Private collection, New York, by descent from the above Exhibition Paris, galerie Lelong, Miró, Femmes, oiseaux et monstres, 6 September-10 October 2018, repr. p. 27

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Joan MirÓ

M

iró was an artist whose aesthetic roots lay in his native Catalonia. After his formational studies at the fine arts school in Barcelona and the exhibition of his first canvases in 1918, he left Spain to resettle in Paris. Beginning in 1920, he formed close ties with Pablo Picasso, André Masson (who introduced him to the works of Paul Klee), and the members of the Dada movement. He then became engaged with the Surrealist movement, which appealed to his interest in the oneiric, signing the Manifesto in 1924. During the summer of 1925, at Mont-roig, he began his large series of « peintures de rêve » (“dream paintings”) as Jacques Dupin called them.

Joan Miró, Paris 1936.

Archives Successió Miró

The 1930’s were marked by his increasing distance from the Surrealists and his declaration that he wanted to assassinate painting by renouncing tradition and living in complete liberty. In consequence, he turned to new materials, such as collage (including those that he did for the exhibition Collages that André Breton organized at the Goemans gallery in Paris) and his series of “painting-objects” composed of found objects, metallic pieces, and bits of wood.

However, in 1932, faced with financial difficulties, he was forced to leave his studio in Paris and return to Barcelona in his family home in the Passatge del Crèdit. There, he prepared his first solo show for Pierre Matisse in New York, who presented him to the American public as an avant-garde artist.

resounding success ; he participated in numerous exhibitions in Europe and in the United States, including a very large show at the Kunsthaus in Zurich alongside Max Ernst.

Then, at the family farm in Mont-roig, near Barcelona, he created a series of “drawing-collages” which first the Georges Bernheim gallery in Paris and then the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York showed with great success in the fall of 1933.

The year 1934 for Miro was synonymous with

The gouache presented here was titled Gouachedessin by Miró on the back of the sheet of paper. It comes from a series that he did in August of 1934 in Mont-roig, the summer that the artist began the series of large pastels that mark the beginning of his period of “wild paintings” (1934-1936). It

Gouache-dessin, 1934

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was a transitional period for him, with works that revealed a degree of anxiety, a premonition of the political crisis brewing in Spain: « Inconsciemment, je vivais dans l’atmosphère d’un malaise caractéristique des moments où quelque chose de grave est en train d’arriver. C’est comme avant qu’il ne pleuve. » (“Unconsciously, I lived in the sort of tense atmosphere characteristic of times in which something very serious is about to happen. It’s like right before a storm.”)

1 J. Dupin and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, Joan Miró, catalogue raisonné, dessins, vol. 1, 1901-1937, Paris,

Eleven gouaches from this important series, all of the same dimensions, where included in the catalogue raisonné of his works on paper. 1

2008, no. 479-489.

2 J. Dupin and Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, ibid, p. 11.

3 Joan Miró, cité par Georges Duthuit, « Où allez-

This gouache is the twelfth one. It belonged to the Venezuelan artist Victor Valera and then to Miró’s close friend Carlos Raul Villanueva, the architect of the university in Caracas. Archival photos show the Gouache-dessin hanging in his living-room, over the couch among other works.

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In full metamorphosis, the fantastic figures seem to take shape before our very eyes, their bodies and faces changing form under the pressure of a slow glide between balance and vertigo. « L’imagination de la mort me fit créer des monstres qui m’attiraient et me repoussaient à la fois. » (“Imagining death made me create monsters that both attracted and repulsed me at the same time.”)

Of the dozen gouaches in the series, six are in the collections of major museums in New York (MoMA, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and The Pierre and Maria Gaetana Matisse Foundation), Houston (Museum of Fine Arts), Madrid (Museo Reina Sofia), and Barcelona (Fondation Joan Miró). –– « Je ne fais aucune différence entre peinture et poésie. » 3 (”I don’t make any difference between painting and poetry.”) 3 Joan Miró

vous, Miro ? », Cahiers d’art, no. 8-10, 1936, p. 262.

The series is characteristic of this period, in which Miró experimented more than ever with new techniques and different materials in several series including pastels, drawings, and paintings on sandpaper and black paper. This series of twelve is beautifully unified. The Conté pencil drawing covers almost the entire surface of the paper, and is balanced by patches of pure color. « Le contraste est radical entre le gris du crayon et l’éclat des couleurs qui interviennent dans les ovoïdes, les bandes, et dans des interférences inattendues. » (“There’s a striking contrast between the grey of the pencil and the splashes of color that occupy the ovals and bands and include surprising overlaps”) 2 Gouache-drawing hanging in Carlos Raul Villanueva’s living-room, over the couch among other works, Su Casa, cover, November 1963.

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Francis Picabia (1878-1953)

Vénus

1946 Oil on panel Signed lower right Francis Picabia and titled Vénus upper right 165 x 100 cm 65 x 39.3 in The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Comité Picabia on 10 May 2017.

Provenance Collection Henri Saint-Maurice, Paris, directly bought from the artist in 1953 Private collection, Paris, by descent Exhibitions Paris, 1er Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, July 1946 Paris, Galerie René Drouin, Cinquante ans de plaisir, 4-26 March 1949, no. 104, 135 works from 1897 to 1949, introduction by Michel Tapié, texts by Breton, Bryen, Cocteau, Seuphor, H.P. Roché, Desnos, Marcel Duchamp

L i t e r at u r e Arts, Paris, 26 July 1946, repr.

Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia, 1985, Albin Michel, no. 839, repr. no. 1043, p. 476

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T

he Franco-Cuban artist Francis Picabia took refuge in painting early in life to get over the shock of his mother’s death. In 1911, he became a member of the Puteaux group, where he met Jacques Villon and Marcel Duchamp. During his first stay in New York, in 1913, he participated in the Armory Show exhibiting four pieces, which made him a celebrity.

He returned to New York the next year to visit his friends Duchamp and Man Ray and collaborated with them on Alfred Stieglitz’s famous review 291.

He did a series of works known as “mechanisms” (Very Rare Picture on the Earth, New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Machine Turn Quickly, Washington, National Gallery of Art...), which showed his interest in the industrial world and his passion for automobiles. He soon joined the Dada movement after meeting Tristan Tzara in Zurich. He became one of its principle artists, along with André Breton, who led the movement in Paris and, within six months, came to dominate the art world. But Picabia quit Dada in 1921 and published Pilbaou-Thibaou, a text in which he announced the death of the movement. He then turned toward the nascent Surrealist movement, with which he was associated until 1924, when a new period began. Known as his “monsters” period (First Meeting, 1925, Stockholm, Moderna Museet), he created these works in Mougins, in France’s Midi region, where he lived for twenty years. These works were followed by the celebrated series of “transparencies” (Sphinx, 1929, Paris, Musée national d’Art moderne), which he worked on until the 1930s.

Francis Picabia

he left the capital only occasionally, for brief visits to Olga’s family in Switzerland. Picabia again took up his friendship with Henri Goetz and Christine Boumeester, who came to the studio every Sunday with their young friends, the painters Soulages, Hartung, Atlan, Ubac, and Tal Coat. In 1946, when Picabia was 68 years old, a large retrospective of his work was held at the Kunsthalle in Basel. It opened in January and included 53 paintings; in April of that year, in Paris, Denise René organized another exhibition, the first solo show in Paris dedicated to the artist since the end of the war. His painting, always changing, and always surprising, received a range of reactions. Michel Seuphor, who gave him an exhibition in 1948, declared: « Il n’est peut-être pas de peintre plus contesté aujourd’hui que Picabia. » (“There is perhaps no painter more argued over today than Picabia.”). The artist himself was emphatic about his desire to remain outside current trends: « Ma peinture est une femme qui ne veut pas faire l’amour avec son mari. Je n’aime pas cette façon à la mode de faire des tableaux. Ce n’est que l’étiquette qui les rend importants. » (“My painting is a woman who doesn’t want to make love to her husband. I don’t like that fashionable way of creating paintings.

It’s only their labels that make them important.”)

In January, 1945, Francis and Olga Picabia moved back to Paris and into the family house in the Rue des Petits-Champs, taking over the studio that had once been his grandfather’s. From then on, The actual painting in the artist’s studio in 1953.

Vénus, 194

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1 Maria Lluïsa Borràs, Picabia, 1985, p. 449.

2 Colline, “An interview with Francis Picabia”, Journal des Arts, Zurich, no. 3, November 1945, pp. 50-51, in Francis Picabia, Écrits,

Always extremely resourceful, Picabia, in the post war atmosphere of recovered freedom and general renewal, found himself rejecting the popular realism of the war and adopting a personal form of abstraction, which was, for him, a new direction. It was in this context that he did the Vénus that we’re presenting here, as well as Niagara, Widow, Viens avec moi là-bas (Come Over There With Me) and Kalinga (Niagara (1947, Borràs no.

851, Berlin, Frick Collection), Widow (1948, expo NY MoMA no. 212, Borràs no. 885, Paris, Musée national d’Art moderne), Viens avec moi là-bas (Come Over There with Me) (1946, Borràs no. 832), and Kalinga (1946, Borràs no. 838, private collection).

Paris, Belfond, vol.2, 1978, pp. 261-264.

Unlike many painters, from Botticelli to Alain Jacquet, who represented Venus as an already-born goddess, Picabia’s is treated as an apparition. In fact, beyond its superb artistic quality, what gives this subject its originality is no longer the birth of Venus, but her gracious and celestial motion. « Vénus et Kalinga représentent deux pôles opposés d’une même recherche, ciel et enfer, sublimation et décomposition de la forme comme personnification de la forme au delà du visible. » (“Vénus and Kalinga represent two opposing extremes of the same investigation,

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Heaven and Hell, the sublimation and the decomposition of form as the personification of form beyond the visible.”) 1 From a dark point within the painting, curved forms unfold like the wings of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis with an upward sweep. The orange rings that undulate in rhythm with this ascension recall the stylized eyes on the tail of a peacock.

The goddess develops in light veils, alleviating all weight. With her wings fully open at the top of the composition, Picabia’s Vénus has become a bird. His abstraction reaffirms his attachment to Surrealism through its mysterious and dreamlife effects, which here and there include details reminiscent of Ernst or Klee, and yet the work can in no way be reduced to that of a particular school. With this Vénus, Picabia testifies to his freedom of expression and affirms the polymorphism of his œuvre, which has come to play an important role in the art of the 20th century, as much in relation to Dada as to Surrealism. This work affirms, once and for all, that Picabia was “an explorer in art, revolutionary and non-conformist, always in search of the new and the unknown”.

The MoMA in New York recently gave homage to the entirety of his œuvre with their retrospective, the first one organized by an American museum (Francis Picabia: Our Heads Are Round so Our Thoughts Can Change Direction, November 2016 to March 2017, also presented at the Kunsthaus in Zurich). –– “There cannot be any figurative in this art, because it is no longer an exploration of the external world, but a way of getting ever more deeply in touch with an interior world.” 2 Colline

Francis Picabia, Kalinga, 1946, private collection.

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Nicolas De Staël (1914-1955)

Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange Still Life with Pears, Green and Orange Background

1954 Oil on canvas Signed lower right Staël 46 x 61 cm 18.1 x 24 in Provenance Jacques Dubourg, Paris Private collection, London Galerie Hopkins Custot, Paris Private collection, Switzerland David Lévy et Associés, Bruxelles Private collection, Switzerland Exhibitions London, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Nicolas de Staël 1914-1955, 4 May-6 June 1956, no. 40, repr.

Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Nicolas de Staël 19141955, Paintings from Collections in Britain, 12 August-10 September 1967, no. 23 Paris, Artcurial, Un art autre/Un autre art, les années 50, no. 125, repr.

L i t e r at u r e Jacques Dubourg and Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël, Paris 1968, no. 823, repr. p. 334 Françoise de Staël, Nicolas de Staël : Catalogue Raisonné de l’Œuvre Peint, Neuchâtel 1997, no. 914, p. 569

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Nicolas De staël

In 1955, at the time of his dramatic death, Nicolas

Nicolas de Staël in his

de Staël was one of the most visible young artists of his generation. His meteoric rise remains exceptional, as does his sudden shift, after ten years of abstract painting, to figurative work in 1952, which created some consternation among his followers. In 1956, during the retrospective of his work at the Musée national d’Art moderne in Paris, a fringe group of critics mounted a concerted attack on de Staël’s final works while others, such as Douglas Cooper and Christian Zervos praised his resistance to the wave of abstraction, which was at its height in avant-garde circles at the time, as well as his ability to “grasp the visible world and fix its reflections in his work”. He is the only one of his generation to have broken with the non-figurative aesthetic and to reconcile abstract form with worldly experience. His return to figuration is complex and doesn’t translate into any systematic bias or stance. For Nicolas de Staël, it was important to get beyond the conventional opposition of abstraction and figuration to allow each painting to be both a representational image and an abstraction of that figure.

his series of “football players”. These were followed by a series of “bottles” (Les Bouteilles, 1952, Rotterdam, Boymans-van-Beuningen Museum) and, immediately afterward, by “bouquets of flowers” (Fleurs blanches dans un vase noir, Toledo Museum of Art). After his trip to Sicily in 1953 and the striking landscapes of Syracuse and Agrigento, and then his move to Ménerbes in the light-drenched Lubéron at the end of the year, Nicolas de Staël returned to still lifes with new pictorial modes, and in particular, his series of “pears”.

Still lifes began appearing in his work in 1952; he started with a series of “apples”: Une pomme, Trois pommes, Cinq pommes. They were a direct outgrowth of his tesselles, abstract patterns based on landscapes around Lavandou, his “roofs”, and

Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange dates from the time when Nicolas de Staël was increasingly returning to the use of a paintbrush, perhaps in order to align himself with the masters that he had long admired and copied, particularly in the

studio, Paris, summer 1954, photo Denise Colomb.

Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange, 1954

Louvre and the Prado in 1935. Here, and in his final paintings, he modified his technique, using a lighter palette emphasized by stark contrasts. The dense and somber paint of his early years became thinner and more colorful. After having worked with a palette knife, trowel, and scraper, he again turned to the brushstroke and more stripped-down forms: the three pears lose their formal integrity to become simply abstract shapes charged with life against an orange background.

The composition of Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange achieves a synthesis of the figurative world and the post-war abstract language. The fruit, positioned on a plate, stands out from a background dominated by the two audacious horizontal bands that compose the table and the wall. In the ten or so Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange that de Staël did in Paris in the summer of 1954, he rendered homage to his predecessors through compositions in which elegance and economy of means reinforce the effect of the colors. One cannot

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Édouard Manet, Deux poires, 1864, private collection.

help but think of Manet’s Deux poires (private collection) and the still lifes of his idol, Courbet, whom he placed at the top of his pantheon. « Quelle joie, Courbet, et quel titan en face des modernes. Avais envie d’embrasser ses tableaux à genoux en priant. » (“What a joy, Courbet, and what a Titan compared with the moderns. I want to get down on my knees and kiss his paintings while praying.”), he wrote to Jacques Dubourg, who was the first owner of the painting we’re presenting here.

De Staël deliberately reduced the composition in order to give this still life a dimension that exceeds its subject; he knew how to take color to its height, imbuing the painting with an extreme tension that translated the passion for creation that had always driven him.

In front of this work, we feel how deeply his absolute desire haunted him, as it did van Gogh, his alter-ego in destiny. In fact, de Staël was surprisingly close to the master of Auvers in his willingness to push the limits of his art always further outward.

And like him, he ended his days when he was at the height of his creative abilities. He left us a dramatically beautiful body of work, of which Nature morte, poires, fond vert et orange is a vibrant example. ––

Les Bouteilles, 1952, Rotterdam, Museum Boymans-van-Beuningen.

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Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Nu et musicien assis Seated Nude and Musician

2 April 1967 Oil on canvas Signed lower right Picasso Dated on the reverse 2.4.67. III 81 x 100 cm 31.9 x 39.3 in The authenticity of this work was confirmed by Claude Picasso on 14 July 2016.

Provenance Galerie Louise Leiris, Paris (no. 62747) Galerie Jacques Melki, Paris Private collection, Brussels, acquired from the above in 5 December 1971 Private collection, France L i t e r at u r e Christian Zervos, Pablo Picasso, Œuvres de 1965 à 1967, vol. xxv, Paris, 1972, no. 325, p. 142, repr.

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N

u et musicien assis is variation on the series of large paintings and drawings that Picasso began in 1963 focused on the theme of the painter and his model. The series includes a number of masterpieces, all of these are distinguished by spontaneous brushwork that translates the force of the artist’s creative energy.

Throughout the 1960s, as he further developed this theme, the painter, faced with the naked model, is replaced by another character portrayed with an attribute that identifies his role – card player, guitarist, pipe smoker, or musketeer.

In Nu et musicien assis, Picasso has eliminated painter and model as well as the easel. It’s no longer a painter, but a flute-player. The flute stands in for the paintbrush and the music for the work of art, and thus it’s the tune that charms the model.

The frame of the studio is erased, and the scene takes places in the open air, amid an idealized nature.

Pablo Picasso

That said, the composition is not a simple reference to a classical scene from Greek antiquity, but his reinterpretation of it in the light of modernity.

The late paintings and drawings from the “painter and his model” series were done during one of the most engaged and energetic periods of Picasso’s life, inspired by his last love, Jacqueline Roque.

Picasso first met her in 1952 at Vallauris during one of his visits to the pottery studio, Madoura, where he was making ceramic pieces and where Jacqueline had just begun working. They married in 1961, and she became the muse that inspired more of his works than anyone else. In Nu et musicien assis, even though her facial features are not readily identifiable, her long, undulating black hair is.

With her voluptuous curves and relaxed pose, the model clearly recognizes her role as the artist’s object of desire and symbolizes the ultimate representation of femininity. Seated before her, the flute-player, inspired by his tune, closes his eyes, certain of his seduction. Painted in 1967, this painting is the purest expression of Picasso’s genius.

Nu et musicien assis, 2 April 1967

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The simplicity of the silhouettes combines with the complexity of the lines, underscoring its force. The figures create a striking contrast in which the classical nature of the theme stands out against the deft pictorial treatment. The work is marked by a harmony similar to that in many paintings from his last ten years and is one of the pieces representative of the final flowering of his work.

N ote

1 K. Gallwitz, Picasso: The Heroic Years, New York, 1985, p. 161.

Pablo Picasso, Nu et musicien assis, 3 April 1967,

The day after he painted the work presented here, which is to say, on 3 April, 1967, Picasso continued to pursue this theme in another canvas, also titled Nu et musicien assis, which depicts the flute-player charming the naked woman not in the open air, but inside a room. That work is among the Picasso masterpieces held by the Fondation Beyeler, on long-term loan from the Anthax Collection Marx. ––

Basel, Fondation Beyeler, on long-term loan from the Anthax Collection Marx.

“Only with advancing years did Picasso recognize in painter and model the radical point of departure that elevates the physical process of painting to the subject of painting itself.” 1 K. Gallwitz

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Maurice Estève (1904-2001)

Montavent

1963 Oil on canvas Signed and dated lower left Estève 63 Signed, dated and titled on the reverse 100 x 73 cm 39.4 x 28.7 in Provenance Neue Galerie, Zürich Private collection, Europe Exhibitions Kassel, Dokumenta II, 1968 Baden-Baden, Kunsthalle, Bazaine, Estève, Lapique, 11 October10 November 1968, repr.

Ulm, Ulmer Museum, Maurice Estève, 27 May-8 July 1973, repr.

Bremen, Kunsthalle, Maurice Estève, 3 February-10 March 1974, repr.

L i t e r at u r e Robert Maillard, Monique Prudhomme-Estève, Estève, Catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre peint, Paris, Ides et Calendes, 1995, no. 562, p. 367

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Maurice Estève

Maurice Estève, born in Culan, a village in the

center of France, came from a modest background.

Self-taught, he worked at a number of trades and spent all his spare time in the Louvre, walking down its halls and drawing. He had his first solo exhibition in 1930 at the Yvangot Gallery. In 1937, Robert and Sonia Delaunay invited him to participate in decorating the Pavillon des Chemins de fer et de l’Aviation (the Pavilion of Railroads and Aviation) at the Exposition universelle. That same year, following Braque’s advice, he was asked by the Franco-Swedish gallery in Stockholm to take part in the important exhibition Peinture française along with Picasso, Gris, Matisse, and Léger.

In 1941, Estève decided to dedicate himself entirely to his art and participated with Bazaine, Lapicque, Manessier, Tal Coat, Édouard Pignon and others in the famous show at the Braun Gallery Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition française (Twenty Young Painters of the French Tradition), which was considered the manifesto of what became known as the “Nouvelle école de Paris”. He entered into a verbal agreement with Louis Carré, who was his gallerist until 1949. It was the era in which the embrace of Bonnard’s colors was at its height.

Maurice Estève in his studio, photo Monique Prudhomme Estève.

In 1956, Jorn Rubow gave him a very large exhibition, the first outside of France, at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen. Estève became internationally known and had solo and group shows around the world. Estève then began working with the Villand-Galanis gallery, which unveiled his watercolors and drawings to the public in 1955. They were immensely successful; in 1956, Pierre Francastel wrote the first monograph on his work, and after that, the shows came one after the other (Stockholm, Basel, Düsseldorf, Copenhagen, Oslo...).

After his spouse died in 1965, he took refuge in the intimacy of his studio and worked in secret.

Montavent, 1963

N ote

1 Quoted in Catalogue raisonné, op. cit., p. 25.

Then in 1967, he began a collaboration with the Neue Galerie in Zurich and started showing at Claude Bernard’s in Paris (drawings in 1972, watercolors in 1973, collages in 1974, and oils in 1977) once again presenting his work to the public. From then on, his work continued to gain importance among his contemporaries and became inscribed in the history of 20th Century art as one of the essential links in the turn toward abstraction.

The city of Bourges dedicated a museum to him that houses a number of his works, and the Musée national d’Art moderne, centre Pompidou, holds ten of his pieces. He is also represented in numerous other museums in France and elsewhere in the world.

Estève composed his paintings according to his inspiration, following a long creative evolution that could take several years. « Processus où la spontanéité et la réflexion se relayent, où les séances de travail, relativement courtes, alternent avec de longues périodes de méditation ou d’oubli et qui vise à préparer ce qu’Estève appelle joliment “le lit de la peinture” » (”A process that goes back and forth between spontaneity and reflection, in which relatively short periods of work alternate with long periods of meditation that prepare ‘the bed of the painting,’ as Estève nicely put it.”) 1 He spoke of a conversation carried on with a work.

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In Montavent, the artist orchestrated a new dialogue between forms and colors, creating a subtle balance both in the layerings of color on the surface of the work and in the curves bathed in diaphanous light.

Estève liked dissonance. He knew how to unite the greatest mastery with true spontaneity, how to oppose the fluidity of curves with the rigidity of straight lines. His confrontations among formal elements found their resolution in an alchemy of style of which Montavent is the perfect example. –– « En vérité une toile est pour moi une somme de reprises incessantes qui dure jusqu’à ce que je me trouve devant un organisme que je sens vivant.

Seule ma sensibilité peut me dire si j’ai atteint ou non cette reconnaissance. » (“In truth, for me, a painting is the result of a series of incessant revisions that continues until I find myself before an organism that I sense is alive. Only my sensitivity can tell me whether or not I’ve achieved this.”)

Maurice Estève

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Maurice Estève (1904-2001)

Aquarelle 104–A

1969 Watercolor on paper Signed and dated lower left Estève 69 60.8 x 49.5 cm 23.8 x 19.6 in Provenance Galerie Framond, Paris, aquired from the artist Private collection, Paris

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Maurice Estève

«J

e travaille avec l’aquarelle comme je travaille avec l’huile [...] À les voir, on pourrait croire mes aquarelles spontanées, je les travaille pourtant énormément. » (“I work with watercolor like I work with oil [...] Looking at them, you might think that my watercolors are spontaneous, but I do a tremendous amount of work on them.”)

Estève would not hesitate to pick up a watercolor already dry and get it wet again to return the paper to its original white. He explained this, saying: « Je ne suis pas un aquarelliste, mais plutôt une blanchisseuse. » (“I’m not so much a watercolorist as a washerwoman.”)

That particular term says a lot about his practice as a watercolorist, which consisted in taking a work that already showed signs of being finished and adding more color to it in order to achieve a sensation of overlapping layers. In a certain sense, he was “washing” and “ironing” it. The resulting color is more luminous and transparent, more “alive”.

Maurice Estève working on a watercolor in Culan, 1974, photo Luc Joubert.

Aquarelle 104–A, 1969

N ote

1 Dora Vallier, introduction to the catalogue for the exhibition Estève, Zurich,

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Such effects animate the vibrant and unexpected colors of Aquarelle 104-A, from 1969. The balance and the freshness of colors that seem to have not yet even dried testifies to the timelessness of both gesture and mark.

Galerie Peter Nathan, April-May, 1973, p. 5.

« Et l’étonnant est là : dans les aquarelles d’Estève il y a bien construction. Une construction faite de transparences superposées qui ont fini par former un ensemble presque compact à force de condenser la lumière. [...] Ayant pour matériau la transparence, elle représente, en effet, ce que la peinture ne peut pas être. » (“And that’s what astonishing: in Estève’s watercolors, there is true construction. A construction made of superimposed transparencies that end up forming a marvelously compact unit because it compresses the light. [...] Using transparency as its principal material, it attains what, in fact, painting cannot.”) 1 ––

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Eduardo chillida (1924-2002)

Dibujo tinta Ink drawing

1973 Ink on paper Signed lower right Chillida 26.8 x 28 cm 10.5 x 11 in Provenance Galerie Lelong, Zurich Private collection, Belgium Exhibition Zurich, Galerie Lelong, Eduardo Chillida, June-August 2004, no.  13, repr.

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Eduardo Chillida

C

hillida began studying architecture in 1943, but quickly gave it up in favor of sculpture, drawing, and engraving. Beginning in 1950, his sculpture became completely abstract and more and more purified, with clear-cut cubic forms leading to elementary “open” and autonomous structures.

His drawing is, in a sense, a matter of sculpture on paper; his conception of sculpture is inscribed in the grand tradition of the modern fine arts and extends the work begun by Pevsner, Giacometti, and Moore. Throughout his career, Chillida worked with a wide range of materials: plaster, iron, wood, stone, steel, concrete, clay, and paper. The play of light and the relationship between positive and negative spaces are at the center of his artistic practice, allowing his sculptures to reinterpret the spaces that they occupy. « Les yeux sont faits pour voir de près et de loin. » (“Eyes are made for seeing both close up and far away”) remarked the artist, for whom works on Eduardo Chillida working in his studio, Villa Paz, Spain,1963. Photo Waintrob.

Dibujo tinta, 1973

N ote

1 Jacques Dupin, “Gravitations”, in Par quelque biais vers quelque bord, éd. P.O.L., 2009, p. 301, a text for the catalogue for the Chillida’s

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paper were a fundamental part of his œuvre. In ink, as with this piece, in pencil, or through the techniques of engraving, cut-out, and collage, his graphic work embraces the same principles as his sculptures, playing between the full and the empty. His abstract drawings in black ink such as Dibujo tinta find themselves right on the line between spatial research and an exercise in calligraphy.

exhibition at the Galerie Lelong in Zurich in June, 2004.

« Justesse des articulations. Musicalité des rapports.

Dans l’ouvert de l’espace, l’ombre est le protagoniste de la lumière. Tension jumelée de la séparation et de l’accouplement, éclairs brisés issus de la faille, comme pour commander la main philosophale à l’œuvre dans l’espace criblé, et sans cesse réactivité... » (“The precision of articulations. The musicality of relations. In the opening of space, the shadow is the protagonist of light. Tension twinned with separation and coupling, broken shafts of light emerging from a rift, as if to order the philosophical hand to work in the riddled space, ceaselessly reactivating...”) 1 ––

We wish to express our deep gratitude for their contribution to this catalogue: Josephine Balloul, David Lévy & Associés, Brussels Laure Ber trand, graphic design, Brussels Anastasia Bushueva, Duhamel Fine Ar t, Paris Ignacio Chillida, Museo Chillida-Leku, Hernani Dominique Choffel, David Lévy & Associés, Paris Philippe de Formanoir, photograph, Brussels Ariane Lelong-Mainaud, ADOM, Paris Monique Prudhomme-Estève, Bourges Alber to Ricci, photograph, Paris Cole Swensen, translation, Paris

Printing by Paperland, Belgium

© SABAM Belgium 2019 © Successió Miró / SABAM Belgium 2019 © Succession Picasso / SABAM Belgium 2019

I would like to pay tribute to Guy Cogeval, former President of the Musées d’Orsay et de l’Orangerie, for his enthusiasm and generous contribution to the development of this catalogue.

David Lévy

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