Maurice de Vlaminck: modern art rebel

Abstract

After his participation in the 1905 Salon d'Automne in Paris, Maurice de Vlaminck (1876-1958) emerged as one of the leading representatives of the French avant-garde. More than any other member of the Fauves, he identified with the attribute of wildness and early on propagated the image of a modern art rebel. His primary source of inspiration was the oeuvre of Vincent van Gogh, whose intensely colored works he had encountered in 1901 in a major solo exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune in Paris. Van Gogh's training as an autodidact, as well as the burgeoning myth of his unrecognized artistic genius, strengthened this identification, which would also be determinative for Vlaminck's later self-image. With over eighty selected works, this richly illustrated catalog offers a well-grounded overview of Vlaminck's painterly oeuvre: from his first compositions in the early twentieth century, to his experiments with Cubism inspired by Cèzanne and Picasso, to his final landscape paintings, in which he developed an individual version of late impressionism.

Contents

Foreword -- Acknowledgments -- Lenders -- Essays -- "Destined by Fate": Vlamnick and Fauvism / Heinz Widauer -- Anarchy of Color: Vlamnick's Fauvist Painting / Daniel Zamani -- "My Inner Being Deeply Shaken": Vlamnick's Reception of Van Gogh's Art / Lisa Smit -- Kinship of Forms: Cèzanne, Picasso, Vlamnick / Anna Storm -- The Expressive Power of Pure Color: Vlaminck and Painting from the Tube / Matthias Krüger -- Catalog of Exhibited Works -- Intoxicated with Color: Fauvist Painting / Sterre Barentsen -- Impressionist Motifs: Painting along the Seine / Jacqueline Hartwig -- The Spirit of Cèzanne: Fragmentation of Forms / Anna Storm -- Bleak Landscapes: The Late Work / Daniel Zamani -- Appendix