Fauvism 00

Fauvism

(fauvism, from the French fauve – wild beast), the name of one of the most significant artistic movements at the beginning of the 20th century; created by the utterance of the French critic L. Vauxcelles, who was at the Salon d'Automne exhibition in 1905, noticing the bronze child's head of the sculptor A. Marques, inspired by the Florentine quattrocento, in the same room with the works of a group of painters, who were called Invertébrés (invertebrates) or Incohérents (incoherent, inconsistent), exclaimed: "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" from this bon-mot became the name and term Fauvism.

Fauvism was created as a result of chance encounters, joint exhibitions and efforts of young unknown artists to affirm their artistic conceptions. At a certain time, they were "brought together by similar technical research, belief in the same aesthetics..." (B. Dorival). About twenty painters, born mainly between 1870 and 1880 (Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, Maurice de Vlaminck, Raul Dufy, K Van Dongen, Othon Friesz, Charles Camoin, André Derain, Georges Braque) took part in its formation. One group of young artists, then still beginners, worked in the atelier of Gustave Moreau, a great teacher who developed in his students a sense for color experiments and the cult of personal freedom. Moreau said: I am the bridge over which some of you will cross.

All of them from the group were characterized by being carried away by similar ideals and relying on the experiences and artistic results of Cezanne, Van Gogh (retrospective 1901), Seurat and Gauguin. Enthusiasm for the synthetic and rhythmically balanced form of african statues played a significant role in crystallizing the attitudes of this new generation, along with the acceptance of the flat composition of Japanese graphics and French medieval glass painting, and the immediacy and naivety of the expression of primitive tribes.

The Fauvists explored the effect of pure tones and imposed on color the duty to achieve form, which the Impressionists consciously dissolved by imposing on it the fluidity of the atmosphere. Fauvists abandon the vibrations of the impressionist palette, and use imaginative visions with greenish shadows, pink rivers, lemon-colored trees. They like pure colors: red, green, yellow, blue, and abandon the so-called "Italian perspective" (falling intensity of coloring according to depth) and geometric constructions in composing the picture. New artistic harmonies are achieved by rejecting everything irrelevant and accidental in favor of the essential (Matise: "Everything that does not benefit the painting, harms it... Composition is the art of arranging various elements in a decorative way, which the painter uses to express his feelings").

Fauvists did not form their own aesthetic code, nor did they proclaim their direction with manifestos. There were no theorists among them. Faivism was not a doctrine, but a free grouping. Fauvist painting was exclusively pictorial: in it, everything was reduced to the relationships of lines and colors. Fauvists were looking for an arabesque that will vibrate harmonically on the canvas. With their rich imagination and sensibility - on the basis of autonomy, form and color - they tried to realize a reality that is more authentic than what is visible to the eyes. They wanted to present life itself, not to reproduce the feeling of life. They understood the image as a flat surface that captures light rays and returns them to space.

In those few years, Fauvism produced works that were uniquely spontaneous and consistent, but its efforts were not carried out to the fullest extent possible. It had to be dispersed, because it was essentially just a sum of attempts. In addition, fauvistic exaltation and colorist violence were not always the result of an authentic experience as was the case with van Gogh. The heroic age of Fauvism ends already in 1907; some fauvists were attracted by Picasso's structural innovations, while others (Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, Friesz) under the influence of Cézanne's strict discipline calmed their enthusiasm or returned to neo-traditionalism and the principles of classical harmony. Matisse and Dufy were the only ones who managed to preserve until the end of their lives the primary joy and freedom of Fauvism and develop it further according to their individual temperaments.

Fauvism lasted for a short time, from 1898 to 1907, but it succeeded in purifying painting, accelerating the emergence of Cubism (through Braque, Matisse and Derain) and enabling the development of German Expressionism, which adapted Fauvist coloristic exaltations to its compositions (influences on the Die Brücke group through the mediation of Van Dongen). Italian Futurism certainly owes certain impulses to Fauvism. In addition, through Kandinsky, who took the Fauvist freedom and autonomy of form to its farthest consequences, Fauvism opened the possibility of the emergence of abstract art (non-geometric, expressive direction) and created the preconditions for the emergence of surrealism.

Lit.:

Bernard Dorival – Les etapes de la peinture francaise, II, Galimard Paris, 1944

J. P. Crespelle, The Fauves, Vallecchi Editore,1962

J. É. Muller, Fauvism,  Praeger,  1967

ArtintheFridge, September 2022

Links to other articles:

Modern Art

https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/modern-art-00

Impressionism

https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/impressionism-00

Post-Impressionism

https://www.fxhash.xyz/article/post-impressionism-00

Cubism

Expressionism