His confident brush strokes of pure and intense color made our hearts beat faster as we paid glad homage to his style. Maurice de Vlaminck was one of the Fauves that my husband, Jim, and I had come to know better in our chase for Matisse. Last week when daughter Blair was visiting, we made our way though the crowd who had also come to pay their regards and consider Vlaminck's work. We ogled the paintings together -- especially those of the Fauvist period -- which were our favorites of the show.
I recommend getting your tickets on the website so as not to stand in
line outside.
This exhibition brings together works of the period 1900-1915, from
Maurice de Vlaminck’s (1876-1958) earliest known paintings -
Vlaminck’s career started when he was 17, but none of his juvenalia
has been preserved - in which he already asserted his characteristic
violence, down to the works produced at the beginning of the First
World War, which reflect his contemporary research on the rendering of
space.
An overview of Vlaminck’s production at that time reveals the key part
he played in the renewal of painting which started in the early 20th
century, the inventiveness of the research he undertook with Derain
and which made Chatou one of the most active centres of that renewal.
Vlaminck’s work, during that time of important questioning and
aesthetic transformations, ought to be considered both through its
relation with the post-impressionistic generation that had preceded
him (Van Gogh, Gauguin, the Nabis, Cézanne, Signac) and for his
tremendous audacity which allowed for all sorts of excess in
expressive gesture, colour paroxysm and selective deformation: “I
heightened all the tones, I tranposed all the feelings I could
perceive into my orchestration of pure colours. I was a tender, wild
at heart barbarian” (Dangerous Corner, 1929).
