Kees Van Dongen
Le Doigt sur la joue (A Finger on Her Cheek)
1910
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
© ADAGP, Paris 2011
Kees Van Dongen
La nuit ou la lune
1922
Palais Princier, Monaco
© Palais Princier Collection
© ADAGP, Paris 2011
© Palais Princier de Monaco2010/Charles Franch
Fauve, Anarchist and Socialite: Kees van Dongen The Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris presents a complete exhibition devoted to the multifaceted artist Kees van Dongen (1877–1968), a socially-conscious painter who was one of the leaders of the Fauves. 25 March – 17 July 2011]]>
Source: Musée d’Art Moderne / theartwolf.com
“Painting is the most beautiful of lies.”
Kees van Dongen
Widely known for his sensuous and colorful female portraits, Kees van Dongen was nevertheless much more than a mere portraitist. As the Musée d’Art Moderne says in a press note, van Dongen is an artist “who dazzles with his discoveries while disconcerting with the diversity of his subject-matter”. Presenting 90 paintings and drawings -as well as ceramics-, the exhibition is a good evidence of this diversity, showing female portraits (most notably the nice ‘Le Doigt sur la joue’ and ‘Portrait de Madame Maria Ricotti dans L’Enjôleuse’), male portraits (‘Yves Mirande’) interior scenes (‘La vasque fleurie’) and even almost mystical images such as ‘La nuit ou la lune’.
According to the press note of the exhibition, “Colour made Van Dongen the guiding spirit of Fauvism, the colour he revivifiedwith his trips to Morocco, Spain and Egypt and his reinvention of the Orient in the early 1910s”. The exhibition shows some of these ‘oriental’ paintings, most notably ‘Marchande d’herbes et d’amour’ (1913), lent by a private collector from Istanbul.
The works in the exhibition date from 1895 to the early 1930s. Though Van Dongen was a long-lived artist (he died in 1968, age 91), his late works do not match the quality of the works shown at this exhibition.
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