Eternal struggle between line and color, between Poussin and Rubend, color has always managed to take its place at the center of creation since the Renaissance. It was at the heart of all the preoccupations of the early 20th century, of which the Fauves, from 1905 onwards, were the main ambassadors. Colour is an inexhaustible source of creation and artistic genius, remaining the subject of all sorts of interpretations.
Thus, our work Compotier, bananes et fruits sur entablement (1905), by Raoul Dufy, is the perfect example of this explosion of colour and the liveliness with which it serves its subject. Moving away from a perfect reality, on the contrary, the artist experiments with colour, he plays with it, advocating his freedom of expression.
A close friend of Dufy, Emile Othon Friesz is also amongst the most important Fauves. Straddling the fine line between color and form, Emile Othon Friesz spent his entire artistic quest trying to find the balance between the two, an attempt also celebrated in our work, Paysage avec arbres. This renewed infatuation with color at the center of creation is an European phenomenon.
German artists developed their own movements and aestheticism. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner has been a key figure, as one of the founding members of one of the most important movements in German art history, Die Brücke. This characteristic work of German Expressionism, Nature morte à la lampe, dating from 1912, marks the viewer by its frontality and the vitality of its colours. Green, blue, pink and orange become the allies with which the artist confronts this modernity.
Hans Hartung has always been concerned with translating the inexpressible onto the canvas. Hartung’s emotional abstractions eliminate all figurative elements, seeking freedom of gesture and spatial dynamism with a litany of non-traditional tools and a combination of colours that no artist before him would have dared. Our work P1974-A21 is a testament to Hartung’s ultimate freedom and his instinctive desire to push the art of painting, colour and movement to the extreme.
We are happy to add to this selection two very unusual works of art : kites by Lohse and Domoto! 30 systematic colour columns vertically by Richard Paul Lohse is an intricate work that masterfully combines graphics and geometry, with more than 30 color gradations.
Continuing the initiative of dialogues with the contemporary art scene, HELENE BAILLY exhibits Liu Bolin who presented his first series Hiding in the City in 2005, a self-portrait of the artist immobile and covered in paint, merging with the rubble of his studio, located in the artists’ district razed by the Chinese government. A silent protest: Liu Bolin makes himself invisible to be noticed. Since then, he has been creating works that combine photography, body art, optical art and living sculpture. The selection of works in the COLORAMA exhibition includes works from different artistic movements and media. From Dufy’s Fauvism to Kirchner’s Expressionism, via Gleizes’ Cubism and Hartung’s Abstraction, this search for the emancipation of colour invites visitors to interact, to feel and even to hear, as Wassily Kandinsky said, the colours of the artist’s soul.
