Maurice de Vlaminck

Pure color! At the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris, a group of young artists burst onto the scene with provocative paintings. One of them was Maurice de Vlaminck, who was only twenty-nine years old at the time. His friend André Derain also participated, as did Henri Matisse, who had already gained some notoriety. Though not an official group, the artists were kindred spirits.

Like the young Expressionists in Germany around the same time, these French artists radically asserted the expressive power of pure color. Critics perceived their bold hues as unbridled and uninhibited and soon dubbed them “wild beasts”—fauves in French. The artists themselves did not like the term “Fauvism”; only Vlaminck embraced it.

Gaudy makeup and voluptuous corporeality mark the women as prostitutes. Unflinchingly, Vlaminck shows them in garish color, using bright red as a visual irritant. As a symbol, however, the color red also constituted a programmatic assertion of wildness and passion.

The intrepid art dealer Ambroise Vollard staked everything on Vlaminck’s work and in 1905 purchased the entire contents of the artist’s studio. Previously, Vollard had also represented controversial artists like Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso. From then on, Vlaminck was able to concentrate entirely on painting, and within only a few years produced an astonishing quantity of work. Spontaneity and rapidity were part of his strategy.

He applied the paint unmixed and unthinned, straight from the tube. The saturated tones glow with remarkable intensity. In his choice of hues, Vlaminck was less interested in realism than in expressive power.

Reflections on the waves and green riverbanks: Vlaminck’s favorite and most frequently painted subjects were the river landscapes and villages along the Seine. In this regard he followed in the footsteps of the Impressionists: like Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, Vlaminck worked en plein air amid changing weather conditions, painting directly from the motif.

In many paintings, Vlaminck turns his attention to the water, using powerful, distinct brushstrokes to give the scenery a sketch-like appearance. He omits details and abstracts nature, using strategic contrasts to intensify the coloristic effect: the cobalt blue of the water seems luminous, juxtaposed with the red house roofs on the riverbank.

During his time in the military around 1900, Vlaminck had become politically conscious and had devoured the writings of anarchists. He published articles advocating for the dispossessed and in support of striking workers. He openly professed anarchism and rebelled against militarism and nationalism. In painting, he found a safety valve—and freedom to overturn rigid rules and traditional norms.

Eventually the bright colors of his Fauvist phase were no longer enough for Vlaminck, and his painting began to change. He struck out in a new direction, distancing himself from Fauvism. From around 1907 on, Vlaminck transitioned to a darker, more muted palette. At the same time, he now showed a keener eye for the observation and development of geometric structures.

Between 1905 and 1907, a genuine “Cézanne fever” broke out in Paris. Several major exhibitions following the death of the pioneering artist prompted his rediscovery and fueled the emerging movement of Cubism. Attentively, Vlaminck observed these new developments.

After World War I, Maurice de Vlaminck turned his back on avant-garde experimentation. As a young Fauvist painter between 1904 and 1908, the self-described rebel had once played a decisive role in pioneering modern painting. Now, however, he returned to previous modes of art, developing an idiosyncratic version of Post-Impressionism in his late work.

During the German occupation of France (1940–44), Vlaminck rejected the French avant-garde and polemicized against it, unabashedly praising the vitality of Nazi art and culture. At the same time, however, his own works fell victim to the reactionary artistic policies of the Nazis and were removed from German museums as “degenerate.”