Michael Werner Gallery exhibits Paintings by Swiss Artist Félix Vallotton |
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| Written by Cassie Silversmith |
| Monday, 08 February 2010 01:30 |
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 This distinguishing quality in Vallotton is perhaps attributable to the
artist’s method of combining sketches and photographs to compose a picture
(encouraged by Vuillard and Bonnard, who also used photographs in the
preparation of their paintings, Vallotton made frequent use of a Kodak). This
process is more often associated with another of his contemporaries, Francis
Picabia, yet Vallotton does not share Picabia’s willful exuberance and lightness
of touch, nor are his paintings concerned with any exploration of the
relationship between painting and photography. Masterfully, Vallotton deployed
an academic approach to create a unique psychological edge in his art. His
surprisingly “pre-modern” qualities set Vallotton apart from his contemporaries
and make his works appear fresh and worthy of consideration today. Félix Vallotton was born in Lausanne in 1865. Immediately on leaving college, in 1882, he moved to Paris to begin his formal fine arts training at the Académie Julien. Vallotton excelled at a young age and was soon producing commissioned portraits, critical writings, and numerous prints. By 1891 he had developed the highly innovative woodcut style that would later bring him commercial and critical success, both in Paris and abroad. His graphic works of this time also caught the attention of Nabis, a group of avant-garde artists including Bonnard, Denis and Vuillard, among others, who shared Vallotton’s interest in Japanese printmaking and Symbolism, and whose works embraced a radically reductive approach to form and color. Vallotton was briefly aligned with this group but ultimately his love of Ingres and a refined, classical approach to realism distinguished him from his more experimental compatriots. Vallotton would later explain in his autobiography, The Murderous Life, “Nothing made me feel more clearly the warmth of a female body and the weight of a breast than Ingres’s manner of contouring a form with the brush.” Works of Félix Vallotton can be seen in private and public collections in Europe and the United States, including Kunstmuseum Basel; Kunstmuseum Bern; Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva; Musée d’Art moderne et contemporain de Strasbourg; Musée d’Orsay, Paris; The Baltimore Museum of Art; The National Gallery of Art, Washington; and The Barrett Collection, Dallas, TX. A major touring retrospective of the artist originated at the Yale University Art Gallery in 1991. More recently, Vallotton was the subject of an important survey, Idyll on the Edge, presented at Kunsthaus Zürich and the Hubertus-Wald-Forum at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg. Visit Michael Werner Gallery in New York at : http://www.michaelwerner.com/ Click on logo below to add this article to your favorite Social Website ~ |
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