PDF

Press Release
ARTVERA’S Gallery presents :
Landscapes and Still Lifes
late XIXth – early XXth
6 novembre 2007 – 30 avril 2008
Artvera’s Gallery
1, rue Etienne Dumont CH-1204, Geneva – Switzerland
(Old Town, practically on the Place du Bourg-de-Four)
Open : Monday – Friday 9.30 – 12.00 and 13.30 – 19.00
Saturday 11.00 – 19.00 or by appointment
Contact : phone +41 (0)22 311 05 53 fax : +41 (0)22 311 02 10 [email protected]
www.artveras.com
Thematic of the current exhibition
Prolonging its Dialogues in colour, Artvera's Gallery is focusing for this new exhibition on
landscape and still life genres, including floral themes as well, in order to emphasize, either through
contrasts or similarities, the rich and very varied ways in which the great Masters of the late
Nineteenth and first half of the Twentieth centuries treated similar subjects.
1
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Landscapes : contrasting approaches
Expressionism
Emil Nolde, Marschhof, 1947
Modernism, New Figuration
The post-romantic emotional
violence of an Expressionnist landscape
by
Emil
Nolde,
twilight
and
tempestuous, in Marschhof not far from
the North Sea, is also juxtaposed with
the stylized, modelled and sophisticated
depiction of a south of France landscape
by Moïse Kisling, the urban painter who
forged his style in Montparnasse in the
Paris of the Roaring Twenties.
Moïse Kisling
Sanary Landscape, 1932
2
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Impressionism
Alfred Sisley, The Loing at St-Mammès, 1884
In depicting the Loing River, the Impressionist painter Alfred Sisley used pale and soft hues in
a motionless atmosphere, setting out long perspectives under an expansive sky which fills three
quarters of the canvas, whilst the Fauve Maurice de Vlaminck, in contrast, painted the Seine at
Chatou with extremely intense saturated blues, in an emotionally agitated climate, renouncing depth
to emphasize the rectangular brushstrokes and leaving only the upper quarter of the turbulent sky.
Fauvism
Maurice de Vlaminck, Chatou’s Bridge, 1906-07
3
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Landscapes : similar interests, light effects
Impressionism, Neo-impressionism and Post-impressionism
Between 1876 and 1877, Renoir was passionate
in his research of the effects of light filtered
through foliage, as can be seen in his famous
painting Le Moulin de la Galette (1876). The
trees act like a stencil and flickers of sunlight fall
through them on the people, the ground or
objects. Landscape was painted as a result of
these experiments.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Landscape, 1879
In fact also the luminous effects interest Willy
Schlobach, leader of Luminism, the Belgian neoImpressionist school, and founder member of Le
Cercle des XX who proposed to renew art in
Belgium at the dawn of the Twentieth Century. A
multicoloured light scintillates on water, the
snow and the clouds, with a hypnotic vibratory
effect.
Willy Schlobach, View on a Lake, 1920
The post-impressionism of Gustave Loiseau
seems to aim for a classical ideal inasmuch as
the composition is balanced and the colours are
harmoniously matched. Here also, the typical Ile
de France light at the end of a winter afternoon,
making the slates, stones and hackney carriages
of Paris gleam with extremely realistic hues, is at
the centre of the painter’s preoccupations.
Gustave Loiseau, Paris, Place de l’Etoile
4
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Pointillism
These Brittany cliffs are treated
according to a Pointillist technique
close to free Divisionism: dots of
contrasting
colours
alternately
juxtaposed produce, from afar, a
new resulting colour.
Willy Scholbach
The Cliffs, 1907
Maximilien Luce is also a
great Master of the
Pointillist technique, used
here in a view of
Montmartre.
Maximilien Luce
Montmartre,
Rue des Saules
Luce here surpasses the simple
representation
of
a
visual
impression to reach the stage of
expression that transposes and
sublimates, resulting in a fairy-like
and magic appearance.
Maximilien Luce
Paris, Animated Street at night,
1896
5
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Post-impressionism associated with the exuberance of colours:
This Pointillist work belongs to the first creative phase of Picabia. It also takes part in the exaltation
of the colours of the south of France proper to so many of the painters of this effervescent period,
thanks to the breach opened in the field of colour by Van Gogh and Gauguin.
Francis Picabia St-Tropez, Sun Effect, 1909
Baranov-Rossiné used the Impressionist stroke here to create an effect of radiating light and bursting
energy. During the same period, the Italian Futurists who were in contact with the Russian Avantgarde, systematically developed this process in their representations of the artificial light of cities.
Vladimir Baranov-Rossiné, Sunset on the Dniepr, 1907
6
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Still Life: The influence of Cézanne
The influence of Cézannian still life is felt in two remarkable works which constitute one of
the strong points of this exhibition, one by Pechstein the other by Vlaminck:
Max Pechstein, The Red Tea Set, 1916
In these two paintings, following
Cézanne’s lesson, the fruits are treated like
multifaceted, geometrical forms and the choice
of objects (goblets, teapots, vases, bowls, cups)
emphasizes Cézanne’s celebrated sentence
transmitted by Emile Bernard which caused
intense theoretical thinking among the painters,
followed by practical applications as diverse as in
these two paintings:
“All is only spheres, cylinders and cones”
Vlaminck distinguishes himself by his long
rectangular strokes, whilst Pechstein, the most
moderate among the Expressionnists of Die
Brücke, sought intense contrasts of colour. The
latter spent some time in Paris, hence this
formal influence.
Maurice de Vlaminck, Still Life, 1916-18
7
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Beyond Cézanne, other cylindrical cups and circular shapes:
Pierre Bonnard, The Fruit Bowl, 1914
Max Pechstein, Still Life with Mirror, 1917
In this work, Chterenberg flattens
the perspective just as Matisse
did, concentrating on the circular
drawing of the cup placed on the
circle of the table in a room which
also seems rather round. This
formal play is emphasized by the
monochromatic approach which
confers an oneiric and vaporous
atmosphere
on
this
representation.
David Chterenberg
Still Life with Vase, 1925
8
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Flowers
Emil Nolde, Pensies, 1908
Emil Nolde, Poppies, 1946
It is one of the themes preferred by Emil Nolde,
who painted the most varied floral subjects
throughout his career, both in oil and in
watercolour.
Emil Nolde, Gladioli , 1907
Emil Nolde, Red Flowers, 1925 (aquarelle)
9
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Karl Schimdt-Rottluff paints his floral subject
in a more purely Expressionist way: the
search for an angular drawing, playing with
motifs and underlined by black outlines
which frame intense and contrasted planes
of colour, shows here the influence of the
primitive arts and engraving specific to the
research carried out by the group Die Brücke
of Dresden.
Karl Schmidt-Rottluff
Still Life with Red Flowers
1913
According to aesthetics very distinct from German
Expressionnism, Moïse Kisling sought to purify forms
and colours, an elegant and frozen sophistication,
underlined even by the choice of orchids: rare and
expensive flowers, learnedly cultivated, very urban in
Europe and intended to seduce the customers of the
Montparnasse painter associated with the Roaring
Twenties.
Moïse Kisling
Orchids
1933
The representation of lilacs is one of Petr
Konchalovsky’s favourite themes. These
flowers are so lively vis-à-vis the spectator
that they give the illusion of exhaling their
suave perfume, brightened by shimmers of
light or obscured in the shade of their leaves
whose sharp green contrasts with the black
of the fine branches.
Petr Konchalovski
The Lilacs
10
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Animals with feathers:
Painters were often interested in animals with feathers which, dead or alive, always remain worthy
of interest on the chromatic level.
Renoir’s vaporous stroke
wonderfully evokes the soft
plumage of the partridge
which nestles among fruits
painted
in
particularly
realistic
hues,
refined
evocation of the pleasures of
the art of dining.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Still Life with a Red
Partridge
The voluntarily restricted range of colours to
three major hues, dull brown, deep green and
immaculate white, gives a compact and dark
force to this evocation of hunting.
Petr Konchalovski
Still Life Woodcock and Basket
1946
Baranoff-Rossiné, a very
versatile
artist,
shows
himself here in a new light,
that of humour and
lightness, in a figuration
where form and colour are
both simplified and realistic,
thus pre-empting certain
tendencies of the Twenties.
Vladimir Baranoff-Rossiné
Cockerel and Rhubarb, 1912
11
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]
Other painters presented within the framework of
Landscapes and Still Lifes, late XIXth – early XXth
are :
Alexej von Jawlensky - Natalia Goncharova - Konstantin Korovine – Boris
Anisfeld – Henri Manguin – Emile Othon Friesz – Raoul Dufy – Henri Moret.
The painters already cited in this press release are:
Emil Nolde – Max Pechstein – Karl Schmidt-Rottluff – Alfred Sisley – Maurice
de Vlaminck - Pierre-Auguste Renoir – Pierre Bonnard – Moïse Kisling – David
Chterenberg – Maximilien Luce – Gustave Loiseau – Francis Picabia – Willy
Schlobach
For any additional information or to obtain photographs for the writing of an
article, please contact us:
[email protected]
tél : 022.311.05.53
fax : 022.311.02.10
Galerie Artvera’s
1, Rue Etienne-Dumont
1204 Genève – Suisse
In the Old Town, very close to the Place du Bourg-de-Four
12
Galerie Artvera’s 1, rue Etienne Dumont - 1204 Genève - SUISSE
tél. +41(0)22 311 05 53 - fax +41(0)22 311 02 10 - www.artveras.com - [email protected]