Georges Valmier

Galerie de l'Effort Moderne (Léonce Rosenberg), Paris
Sale: Hôtel Drouot (Maître Loudmer), Paris, 4th May 1976, lot 101
Private Collection, France
Sale: Maître Lombrail, Enghien-les-Bains, 21st June 1988, lot 48
Private Collection, France (purchased at the above sale)
Acquired from the above by the present owner

Bulletin de l'Effort Moderne, no. 25, Paris, May 1926, illustrated
Christophe Jorom-Derem in Beaux-Arts, no. 46, May 1987, illustrated p. 28
Denise Bazetoux, Georges Valmier, Catalogue raisonné, Paris, 1993, no. 459, illustrated p. 139

From 1920 onwards the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne handled Valmier's entire production. Léonce Rosenberg, the gallery's founder, was particularly interested in Cubism and the ideas of Neo-plasticism initiated by Mondrian, and he advised Valmier personally.

In the July 1925 issue of the Bulletin de l'Effort Moderne, Valmier expressed his ideas on Cubism: 'It is not a question of making simply what what one sees, but of feeling, of understanding what is. And this in order to make something utterly different from that which already exists and of which our eyes can only perceive a limited proportion' (quoted in D. Bazetoux, op. cit., p.25).

The present work exemplifies these ideas through the flattening and abstraction of the fruit and flowers on the table. In so doing, the artist goes beyond the purely visual to create layers of suggested meaning in a complex and successful composition.