Exhibition catalog, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris 2021.
Chaim Soutine/Willem de Kooning. Painting incarnate.
Hazan
Regular price
€40,00
| N° d'inventaire | 24060 |
| Format | 24.5 x 31 |
| Détails | 230 pages, numerous color illustrations, paperback. |
| Publication | Paris, 2021 |
| Etat | Nine |
| ISBN | 9782754111928 |
The Musée de l'Orangerie presents an exhibition bringing together the works of Chaïm Soutine (1893–1943), a painter from the School of Paris of Russian origin (present-day Belarus), and Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), an American abstract expressionist of Dutch origin. This exhibition will focus more specifically on exploring the impact of Soutine's painting on the pictorial vision of the great American painter. Soutine left his mark on the post-war generation of painters with the expressive force of his painting and his figure as an "artist maudit," grappling with the vicissitudes and excesses of Parisian bohemia. His work was particularly visible in the United States between the 1930s and 1950s, a time when the figurative artist of the European tradition was reinterpreted in the light of new artistic theories. The gestural painting and pronounced impasto of Soutine's canvases led critics and exhibition curators to proclaim him a "prophet," a herald of American abstract expressionism.
It was precisely at the turn of the 1950s that Willem de Kooning began the pictorial project of Woman, canvases in which a singular expressionism was constructed, between figuration and abstraction. The development of this new language corresponds to the moment when the painter summoned the artistic universe of Chaïm Soutine and confronted it. De Kooning discovered the paintings of his predecessor in the 1930s, then at the retrospective dedicated to the painter at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950. He was then particularly influenced by the presentation of Soutine's paintings in the collections of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which he visited with his wife Elaine in June 1952.
Better than any other artist of his generation, de Kooning was able to detect the tension between the two seemingly opposing poles of Soutine's work: a search for structure coupled with a passionate relationship with art history, and a pronounced tendency toward the informal. Soutine's work thus became a permanent reference for the American artist. De Kooning, who sought to free his painting from the antagonism between figurative art and abstract art by developing an original 'third way', found in Soutine's art a legitimization of his own practice.
The exhibition will bring into dialogue the unique worlds of these two artists through around fifty works structured around essential themes: the tension between the figure and the formless, the painting of "flesh", the "gestural" pictorial practice of the two artists.
These thematic moments will be punctuated by historical perspectives, through the evocation of Soutine's retrospective at MoMA in 1950 and de Kooning's visit to the Barnes Foundation in 1952.
It was precisely at the turn of the 1950s that Willem de Kooning began the pictorial project of Woman, canvases in which a singular expressionism was constructed, between figuration and abstraction. The development of this new language corresponds to the moment when the painter summoned the artistic universe of Chaïm Soutine and confronted it. De Kooning discovered the paintings of his predecessor in the 1930s, then at the retrospective dedicated to the painter at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950. He was then particularly influenced by the presentation of Soutine's paintings in the collections of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which he visited with his wife Elaine in June 1952.
Better than any other artist of his generation, de Kooning was able to detect the tension between the two seemingly opposing poles of Soutine's work: a search for structure coupled with a passionate relationship with art history, and a pronounced tendency toward the informal. Soutine's work thus became a permanent reference for the American artist. De Kooning, who sought to free his painting from the antagonism between figurative art and abstract art by developing an original 'third way', found in Soutine's art a legitimization of his own practice.
The exhibition will bring into dialogue the unique worlds of these two artists through around fifty works structured around essential themes: the tension between the figure and the formless, the painting of "flesh", the "gestural" pictorial practice of the two artists.
These thematic moments will be punctuated by historical perspectives, through the evocation of Soutine's retrospective at MoMA in 1950 and de Kooning's visit to the Barnes Foundation in 1952.
It was precisely at the turn of the 1950s that Willem de Kooning began the pictorial project of Woman, canvases in which a singular expressionism was constructed, between figuration and abstraction. The development of this new language corresponds to the moment when the painter summoned the artistic universe of Chaïm Soutine and confronted it. De Kooning discovered the paintings of his predecessor in the 1930s, then at the retrospective dedicated to the painter at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1950. He was then particularly influenced by the presentation of Soutine's paintings in the collections of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, which he visited with his wife Elaine in June 1952.
Better than any other artist of his generation, de Kooning was able to detect the tension between the two seemingly opposing poles of Soutine's work: a search for structure coupled with a passionate relationship with art history, and a pronounced tendency toward the informal. Soutine's work thus became a permanent reference for the American artist. De Kooning, who sought to free his painting from the antagonism between figurative art and abstract art by developing an original 'third way', found in Soutine's art a legitimization of his own practice.
The exhibition will bring into dialogue the unique worlds of these two artists through around fifty works structured around essential themes: the tension between the figure and the formless, the painting of "flesh", the "gestural" pictorial practice of the two artists.
These thematic moments will be punctuated by historical perspectives, through the evocation of Soutine's retrospective at MoMA in 1950 and de Kooning's visit to the Barnes Foundation in 1952.