Lot 26
  • 26

Maurice de Vlaminck

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Description

  • Maurice de Vlaminck
  • Nature morte au pichet et fruits
  • Signed Vlaminck (lower left)
  • Oil on canvas
  • 18 1/4 by 15 in.
  • 46.4 by 38.1 cm

Provenance

Galerie Max Kaganovitch, Paris
Acquired from the above in October 1964

Catalogue Note

"Vlaminck's concern with the immediate led him to base his painting around a combination of the three primary colors, especially the cobalts and vermilions with which, he said, he wanted 'to burn down the Ecole des Beaux-Arts,' and 'to express my feelings without troubling what painting was like before me.'  As many commentators have pointed out, this sometimes led to a pursuit of self-expression in itself, indifferent to aesthetic standards.  Vlaminck admitted as much, indeed, boasted of it:  'I wanted to reveal myself to the full, with my qualitites and my defects.'  It has been written of him that he relied entirely on first impressions, finding no place in his art for revisions of any kind, 'for he did not distinguish between art and life - and the experiences of life cannot be changed and corrected, only repeated in a different form.'  This is aptly said, but by no means the last word on Vlaminck, especially the Vlaminick of 1906"  (John Elderfield, The "Wild Beasts": Fauvism and Its Affinities, New York, 1976, pp. 70-71). 

While the heightened palette is uniquely Vlaminck's own, the taught structure of this composition owes much to Cézanne: the asymmetrical balancing of objects, the modelling of form and density of the objects, the upward tilt of the table top, and the framing device of the drawn curtains.