Galerie HELENE BAILLY is delighted to celebrate the Fauve movement, a fundamental parenthesis of modernism. 

Among the selection of works celebrating the fauve style, Le Port d'Anvers, painted in 1906 by Émile Othon Friesz, is undoubtedly one of the most striking. Friesz spent that summer with his friend Georges Braque on the banks of the Scheldt, where each perfected his approach to Fauvism. This stay gave rise to some of Friesz's masterpieces, including Le Port d'Anvers. Here, perspective is cancelled out in favor of a superimposition of planes, structured by the colorful abstractions of the pavilions. Flat tints of blue, green and mother-of-pearl, interspersed with touches of pure color, mimic the quivering movement of wind and water, as well as the distinctive light of Flemish shores. Friesz combines the celebration of color with the growing abstraction of form to create a painting that is intimately fauve.

Fauves are also distinguished by their choice of subjects. In Modjesko soprano singer, painted in 1907, Kees Van Dongen delivers a sketch, as if sketched from life, of Romanian-born tenor Claudius Modjesko, famous for his cross-dressing act. This subject of Parisian nightlife is delivered with an intensity that goes beyond naturalistic representation: Van Dongen seeks above all to retranscribe the energy of the spectacle and the upheaval of the gaze brought about by the democratization of electric lighting. The colors are vivid, the brushstrokes animated, as in the red circle formed by the shadow of the singer struck by the spotlights. Van Dongen retained a lifelong love of pure color, particularly the shades of green and blue that run through his entire portrait output. Modjesko soprano singer is a veritable manifesto of the movement at the height of its vitality, dealing without aesthetic compromise with resolutely modern subjects.

Painted in 1908, La Seine au Pecq is a sublime example of Maurice de Vlaminck's late Fauvist style. A leading exponent of the Fauvist movement, alongside Matisse and Derain, Vlaminck gradually moved towards less colorful figuration from 1908 onwards. This canvas shows the highly personal inflection of his painting during this period: there's still a great freedom of form, in the serpentine movement of the branches cutting through the foreground or the geometric flatness of the houses, for example, and the colors are as intense as ever, but already chosen with more naturalism. The abstraction produced by the reflection of the sky in the river, treated in broad strokes of pure color, shows Vlaminck's profound modernity, before his encounter with Cézanne and his choice of a darker palette.

This exhibition pays tribute to the few years that changed the history of modern art. The story of the Fauve movement is that of a group of painters who favored their creative freedom to the point of refusing to form a school, an unusual interlude that shook up spectators and critics alike, and inspired the greatest artistic innovations of the twentieth century.

With "Lâchez les Fauves!", Galerie HELENE BAILLY celebrates the legacy of this revolutionary movement: radical gesture and freedom of vision.