André Derain (* June 10, 1880 in Chatou near Paris; † September 8, 1954 in Garches near Paris) was a French artist. He created, among other things, paintings, graphics, sculptures, stage sets and costumes, survived especially his painting.
Derain was, along with Henri Matisse, the main representative of Fauvism and is counted among the first painters of Classical Modernism. For a time he was considered the leading figure of the French avant-garde and was also in close contact with the cubists Picasso and Braque.
His turning away from the discussion of modernism in the twenties triggered fierce criticism.
André Derain's Leben
Early years
Derain was born in Chatou on June 10, 1880. His father was a wealthy confectioner and city councilor. After attending the Saint-Croix school in Le Vésinet, he went to the Lycée Chaptal in Paris, where he won a prize for drawing and one for science in 1898.
Derain turned to painting at an early age, and around the age of 15 he received some lessons from le père Jacomin, whose son was his classmate. Derain later confessed that he probably learned nothing from these lessons.
His parents intended him to become an officer or engineer, and as a step toward achieving that goal he was sent to the École des Mines in Paris.
Through the friends he made in Paris, his artistic ambitions were encouraged and his intellectual needs stimulated. These friends included the son of the Symbolist poet Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Linaret, a painter friend, and the Comte de la Noue, a young, eccentric Breton aristocrat.
Stays in Paris - Fauvism (1898-1907)
Derain attended the Académie Camillo in the Rue de Rennes in Montparnasse from 1898 to 1899, where he was taught by Eugène Carrière.
A significant change in his life was caused by his friendship, beginning in 1900, with Maurice de Vlaminck, who was a few years older than Derain. At their meetings they discussed the anarchist and the naturalist authors or Cézanne and Courbet and the "primitives". It was the passion for the radical that shaped the subjects of their conversations and that led Vlaminck, eager to challenge the past, to use pure primary colors for his paintings.
On a visit to the van Gogh retrospective at the Alexandre Bernheim (later Bernheim-Jeune) Gallery in 1901, he introduced Vlaminck to Henri Matisse, whom he had met earlier while copying classical works at the Louvre. This was followed by a visit Matisse paid to both young men in Chatou. Matisse reported on it, "The painting of Derain and Vlaminck did not surprise me, for it was very close to the studies I was making myself." Thus, the artists who would give birth to Fauvism a few years later were already together.
In the fall of 1901 Derain was called up for military service and was able to continue his studies only sporadically. He painted a number of decorations for the soldiers' quarters at Commercy in the years that followed, but they were immediately whitewashed. He began a long-lasting correspondence with Vlaminck.
After completing his military service in 1904, Matisse persuaded Derain's parents, who had other plans for their son, to allow him to devote himself henceforth only to painting. Derain enrolled at the Académie Julian against Vlaminck's advice. At the same time, he expressed an interest in African art and stayed in Collioure with Matisse in 1905. In the fall of 1905, the works created in Collioure were exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, whereupon the newspaper critic Louis Vauxcelles referred to the painters as Fauves.
Ambroise Vollard bought up Derain's works and took him under contract. In 1905 and 1906 he visited London. It was during this time that he produced his most personal Fauvist works. In 1906 Derain became friends with Picasso, having made contact with Guillaume Apollinaire earlier.
Today, the Chemin du Fauvisme in Collioure commemorates the birth of Fauvism there: reproductions of the paintings created there are displayed in 20 places where Matisse's and Derain's easels stood.
Move to Paris - Cubism (1907-1914)
In 1907 he moved from Chatou to Paris, to the studio house Les Fusains, 22 rue de Tourlaque, Montmartre. During his years in Chatou, he had already met many of the younger members of the Montmartre circle. He especially loved the discussions at the restaurant and café tables and was in constant contact with Picasso, Braque, van Dongen and Vlaminck.
Derain signed an exclusive contract with the gallery owner Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and was in close contact with Picasso as the latter began work on Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
In the summer of 1909 he stayed with Braque in Carrières-Saint-Denis, and in 1910 with Picasso in Cadaqués (Spain). In the fall of 1909 his father died. Three of his works were included in the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists.
In the following years, the artist made other trips, including Beauvais, Serbonne-sur-le-Grand Morin, Camiers in Palais de Calais, Vers in the Lot, and in 1913 Martigues.
World War I and the years after (1914-1921)
Derain was with Braque and Picasso at Montfavet when war broke out, and was called to arms. He served with a motorized unit in Champagne, the Somme, Verdun, L'Aisne, and the Vosges. While a soldier, he produced illustrations for André Breton's Mont-de-Pieté and exhibited it at the Galerie Paul Guillaume in Paris in the fall of 1916.
Shortly after his discharge from the army, Derain made his debut in the theater and ballet world. Diaghilev commissioned him to design sets, curtain and costumes for La Boutique Fantasque - music by Rossini, choreography by Massine. The first performance took place at the Alhambra Theatre, London, on June 5, 1919.
Kahnweiler, who returned to Paris in 1920, now again bought Derain's works until 1922. From 1921 to 1922 Derain stayed in Rome and in 1923 received from Jean Renoir in return for a portrait - Derain painted his wife - four small pictures of his father Auguste Renoir.
Years of criticism (1922-1939)
Towards the end of the twenties, during which he received the Carnegie Prize for Nature morte: La Chasse in 1928, among others, began the years of criticism against him, which is evident in the book Pour ou Contre Derain. Although various painters and critics defended him in this publication, the case for the indictment was made by Pierre Courthion and Jacques-Emile Blanche: "Faith and vehemence, as they testify in his early attempts, seem to have been replaced by the indifference of a skeptic overwhelmed by his knowledge of too many masterpieces seen in museums and collections."
Derain gradually began to withdraw from Parisian life, a tendency that increased from the time he moved into his house in Chambourcy in 1935, which remained his home until his death. What exactly happened during this period is by no means easy to determine. It seems that a certain entrenchment took place.
In 1930 he exchanged his African art objects for Greco-Roman and Egyptian-Roman portraits. In 1931, Derain's New Painting exhibition was held at the Lefevre Gallery in London. In 1933 he sold another part of his collection of African art.
In 1935, the Kunsthalle Bern organized the first major retrospective of his work. In the 1930s, the artist received numerous commissions from the Paris Opera for costumes and decorations, including illustrating Les Héroides by Ovid in 1932 and Salomé by Oscar Wilde in 1938. In 1937 he participated in the retrospective exhibition of the Indépendants in Paris.
World War II and the years after (1940-1954)
Derain worked mainly in Donnemarie-en-Montois in the early 1940s, Vichy in 1940, and the Loire in 1941, returning to Chambourcy after liberation from German occupation in 1944.
During the World War II occupation of France, Derain was fawned over by the German occupiers as a representative of French culture. In 1941, he and other French artists made a trip to Berlin organized by the authorities. There he visited, among other places, the studio of Arno Breker, who at that time was a main representative of so-called German art. Nazi propaganda repeatedly referred to this trip. Why Derain made the trip is not clear. There are sources that state that the Nazis threatened him with the destruction of his studio if he did not make the trip.
Derain's radical departure from the stylistic and conceptual preoccupations of the French avant-garde reached its climax. In 1944, he turned down an offer to become director of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, the most important academy of fine arts in France. After the Liberation, Derain was considered a collaborator by many French and was ostracized. In post-war France, there were initially no public exhibitions of his works.
Derain died in 1954 in the Hauts-de-Seine department. Alberto Giacometti, a friend of Derain, was the only renowned artist to attend his funeral.
André Derain's Painting work
In the years just before and after World War I, Derain was considered by many connoisseurs to be a leading, if not the leading, member of the French avant-garde and the mainstay of the national tradition. At least since the 1920s, however, his work illustrates a return - and thus a departure from the main currents of his time - to a more traditional outlook.
His work testifies to his knowledge of a wide variety of styles; African, Cypriot, Hellenic and Roman art, Italian painting of the Trecento and Quattrocento, the French school of the 15th century, Breughel, the Venetians, El Greco, Caravaggio, Peter Paul Rubens, the Dutch and Spanish masters of the 17th century and closer to our time, Delacroix, Corot, Courbet, Manet, Renoir and Cézanne, among others, contributed to his art. What is characteristic of these years is that he oscillated between two points of view, a realistic and an idealistic one.
In relation to the two most important painters of the French avant-garde, Picasso and Matisse, with whom he was in close contact during his various creative periods, Derain formed a purifying element in his late years with his clear departure from the currents of his time - a linearization of pictorial elements. He himself, as one of the main representatives of Classical Modernism at the time, sought through contact with his predecessors, the path that in his eyes was to be continued in responsibility towards tradition.
Early work (1898-1904)
Derain's early works were landscapes in the manner of Corot, and the first dated paintings from this period, such as The Road to Carrières, reveal a possible knowledge of Cézanne and Gauguin. On the other hand, The Burial, dated around 1899, reveals his appreciation of Manet as well as his preference for those animate figures that would often appear in his painting from then on.
Above all, however, Derain had now embarked on a study of old masters in the Louvre, and it was here that he copied, among others, Christ Carrying the Cross, then attributed to Ghirlandajo, a copy from which he never parted for the rest of his life. It was during this period (1901) that Matisse first met him in the Louvre.
Fauvist period (1904-1907)
Main article: Fauvism
Cubist period (1907-1911)
A dissatisfaction with Fauvism was already expressed in 1906, and in the following year it becomes even clearer that his interest in "pure" color was waning. At this time, like so many in the avant-garde circle, he shared an enthusiasm for African art.
The work of Cézanne also exerted a strong influence on him in those years, from whom he saw 33 paintings at the Salon d'Automne in 1904. Thus, a return to Cézanne's manner can be detected, among other things, in Intérieur with Still Life.
Through contact with Picasso and Braque, Derain was in touch with their founders at the moment when Cubism was developing, but he never fully surrendered to Cubism. He was already dissatisfied with his Cubist thrust, the wildness of which was not in harmony with his own nature, and in 1908 he destroyed all those works that he was reluctant to represent.
Thus, in his 1920 book The Road to Cubism, Kahnweiler reports that Derain "created a whole series of compositions with life-size figures. He exhibited some of them at the Indépendants - such as a bull, a painting with bathers. Fortunately, the bathers were purchased and have been preserved for us. Derain burned all the others in 1908."
Although Derain did not want to follow the path of the Cubists, for the time being, however, he took into account the trend towards simplification and abstraction, which can be read in Paysage à Cassis, among others.
On the other hand, his particular idiosyncrasy and point of view is evident in the painting Martigues, in which he leads the eye far into the distance in accordance with the classical formula.
Derain's uncertainty about which path to take sprang from his pronounced sensitivity to the atmosphere, to the limits and problems of his time. Derain's view that adopting a certain attitude was ridiculous led him to separate from friends Picasso and Braque and to reject Cubism.
He considered that direct colorism - in the sense of Fauvism - was not enough and, on the other hand, he was not ready to surrender completely to the new style of Cubism. At this stage, Cézanne's work offered him a way out, which he seized with enthusiasm.
The difference between his intentions and those of those painters who thought further in the direction of their exploration of spatial relations is shown by the works he painted in Cagnes in 1910. The influence of Cézanne is still pervasive, especially in the paintings Cagnes and Le Vieux Pont à Cagnes.
Gothic period (1911-1914)
A change in style took place in 1911. Characteristic of this is the abandonment of the constructive phase, as seen, for example, in La route de Camiers. The elements that formed Derain's style in that period were extraordinarily complex and even contradictory.
As in previous years, he was extraordinarily receptive to everything that was going on around him and equally eager to confront the past. Thus, he investigated not only Romanesque, Gothic, and Renaissance art, but also Indian and Byzantine art. The years 1911-1914 are often called his période gothique (Gothic period).
Derain's intentions in these years amount to resolving the conflict between two elements: the instinctive quality of primitivism - seen as a means of renewing sources of inspiration - and a constructivism, in the context of Cézanne - as a means of representing the physical appearance of "objects" or nature.
Thus, it is striking that not only in this phase, but also in the future, he tried to maintain a balance between extremes. The conflict between these two poles of his nature allowed him to develop a style all his own, which enabled him to portray his belief in both an enduring inspiration from nature and the emotional forces of human life.
The paintings emphasize the synthetic means Derain had used to express himself at various times in his life. His use of old master formulas allowed him to arrive at a style that was uniquely fresh and appealing. If the valley in Morin reveals a transitional stage in which the spirit of Cézanne is alive, on the other hand, one recognizes in the painting Chevalier X. Influences of Rousseau.
Chevalier X. in turn influenced artists such as Modigliani and Giacometti. Further, Derain reached for religious themes in these years, such as in The Calvary or The Last Supper, and painted a number of diverse and brilliant compositions, from The Violin and the series of paintings of tobacco pots with their Cubist iconography and narrow color scale, to the excellent Cézannean still life in the Chester Dale Collection, Washington, or the more traditional hunting still life La Gibecière.
Derain supplied woodcuts in the Primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first prosaic work, L 'enchanteur pourrissant (1909), showed work at the Neue Künstlervereinigung in Munich in 1910, at the Blaue Reiter in 1912, at the Armory Show in New York in 1913, and also illustrated a collection of Max Jacob's poems in 1912. By this time, Derain's work was already beginning to reflect his studies of old masters.
War years (1914-1922)
In 1914 Derain returned to figurative painting. He produced works such as Le Deux Soeurs, La jeune fille.
In works such as Le samedi, there are clear echoes of Trecento art. In his desire to achieve a "return to order" - as a counterweight, for example, to the anarchistic and anti-art direction of Dadaism - Derain found himself in lockstep with some of the most important figures of his time - Picasso and Cocteau, for example. There was a general call for a "return to order" in those days.
Another change of style (1922-1954)
Derain's renewed change in style may have been prompted by his visit to Rome in 1921-1922. Among other things, the artist looked particularly closely at Roman and Fayum portraits, Pompeian and Roman mosaics, in order to incorporate other classical themes into his works. For him, as for a Poussin, the visit to Rome possibly reinforced the decision to build on tradition.
Derain held the view that the present is in any case the echo and survival of the past. In this regard, he said in 1948: "The intelligentsia, the ancients, knew how to paint a glass of wine. They were really intelligent, they understood things in all their depth, not just an intelligent sight like Matisse. Nowadays anyone can be very intelligent, it's too easy, that's why you don't know what it is anymore, this way of feeling things."
From 1920 until his death, an attempt to trace his stylistic development for an understanding of his painting is not very fruitful. Thus, he treated his subjects according to the character of their subject or the mood of the moment, and admitted to Florent Fels that works of art are created for the environment in which they were conceived.
In the years to come, Derain strikingly oscillated between a realistic manner - as in La Table de Cuisine - and an idealistic one - as in Pierrot et Harléquin. In the major works of this period, Derain's goal of combining the results of various experiments into a comprehensive image - a synthesis - is evident. His sense of volume, his care in the arrangement of forms, always bringing one into relation with another, place him at this stage close to Zurbarán and Caravaggio.
What is striking about Derain is that within a limited creative period, around 1923-1925, he used a wide variety of painterly means in one and the same subject - exemplified in Still Life. La Table de Cuisine, for example, is subject to a clear and taut compositional structure, which is based on a "dry" colorfulness. In contrast, Vase de roses, assiette et pipe shows distinctly sweeter traits and is more reminiscent of Renoir's influence, and again in Un Vase de Fleurs his painting style reminds us that he is a compatriot of Delacroix and Courbet.
Looking at the nudes created during this period, Derain's models have a substance, an earthiness, or a fairy-like quality that has few equals in modern painting, such as in Nu au chat or Le Beau Modèle. In his portraits, he shows his ability to tackle subjects generally considered to belong to academic artists. This ability is expressed in Geneviève or Madame Guillaume.
But he gave the full measure of his abilities in the many landscapes that date from these years. In La Basilique de St. Maximin, one recognizes his commitment to Corot.
Derain's intuitive sense of nature, in turn, so evident in La Clairière with its highly impasto mixture of greens, blues, and browns, can be traced back to Courbet and Cézanne, and on Le gros arbre Hans Tietze remarks: "In this representation the artist's intimate attachment to the classical ideal, the classical form, and the classical mode of painting, which he puts at the service of his high pictorial talent, is revealed more than ever. Thus he is at present the only great painter to continue the Renaissance tradition."
Derain was sure that his art and his position would be misjudged as long as his thoughts on the problems of the twentieth century were not taken into account. He explained, "I do not feel committed to any principle - except that of freedom - but my idea of freedom is that it must be connected to tradition.
I don't want to expound any theories about what should be done in art. I just paint as best I can. The shame is that there are far too many theories floating around and not enough passion to bring them to life."
André Derain's Reception
Testimonials from contemporaries
Derain's early decorative style was idolized in England. Roger Fry commented in the 1910 and 1911 exhibitions at the Grafton Galleries, London, that the "spirit of Poussin" seemed to revive in Derain's painting.
In a speech he gave on the occasion of an exhibition of Derain's work in October 1916, Paul Guillaume described Derain as a man who, after youthful wildness, had succeeded in turning to moderation and moderation. He saw in Derain's work a daring and disciplined temperament that had come to realize an order and that expressive grandeur that he called ancient.
In Since Cézanne in 1922, Clive Bell praised Derain's tremendous strength of character and ability to stand alone. In his eyes, Derain's intention was to create something that, as a work of art, was uncompromising yet humane. He sees him as the representative of something "most alive and binding in France-a passionate love of great tradition, a desire for order, and a will to win that mysterious thing which the Athenians call σπουδαιότης and which the schoolmasters call high seriousness."
Alberto Giacometti commented on Derain's work in 1957 in Derrière le miroir:
All the laws, all the certainties, valid for at least the majority of today's painters, if not for all, even for the abstract, even for the tachists had no more sense for him; so where to find the means to express himself. A red is not a red - a line is not a line - a volume is not a volume, all this is contradictory, a bottomless abyss in which one gets lost."
- Alberto Giacometti
Nazi discrediting of works as "degenerate
In 1937, several panel paintings and prints were confiscated from public collections in Germany as part of the Nazi "Degenerate Art" campaign. Since the Nazis knew the value of the works, they took them to the international art trade for "utilization". The works in question were as follows:
Frauenkopf III (Lithograph; Kupferstichkabinett Dresden; 1941 to the art dealer Karl Buchholz and from there to the Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin New York; whereabouts unknown).
Woman's Head (lithograph; Museum Folkwang Essen; 1939 to the art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt; whereabouts unknown)
La Femme (woodcut; Staatliches Museum Saarbrücken; 1940 to the art dealer Bernhard A. Böhmer; whereabouts unknown)
Frauengruppe (print; Museum für Kunst und Kunstgewerbe Stettin; 1940 to the art dealer Karl Buchholz and from there to the Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin New York; whereabouts unknown)
The Salt Ponds of Martigues (oil on wood, 72 × 57 cm, 1908; Museum Folkwang Essen; 1939 to Galerie Fischer, Lucerne; last auctioned by Sotheby's in 1998 to the Lebanese politician Ibrahim Najjar)
View from the Window / The Calvary (oil on canvas, 68 × 55 cm, 1912; Museum Folkwang Essen; 1939 to the Galerie Fischer for sale; acquired by the Kunstmuseum Basel)
Still Life, Bread and Fruit (oil on canvas, 92 × 73 cm; Museum Folkwang Essen; 1939 to Karl Buchholz and from there to the Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington)
La Vallée du Lot (oil on canvas, 72 × 90 cm, 1912; Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Cologne¸1939 to Karl Buchholz and from there to Buchholz Gallery Curt Valentin New York; last auctioned by Sotheby's in 2018)
Rebland im Frühling (oil on canvas, 89 × 116 cm, 1906; Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim; 1939 to Karl Buchholz. Acquired by Kunstmuseum Basel)
Aftermath
Derain was a realist with a strange naiveté, a frondeur, a Renaissance man and endowed with rare desires. Derain once said "that everyone should find the wine that suits him, that there is a wine for every palette." And when asked if he had found his, he replied, "Non."
At critical moments in his career, his rejection of some of the main pursuits of his time - cubism and abstraction - was the result of a thoughtful personal stand. He refused to trim his sails in deference to fashion. Most of the books or essays dealing with Derain's work were published at a time when he was still the lion of the Parisian scene.
The artist's works are exhibited in Paris, London, New York and Prague, among other places. Many of his paintings are not open to the public. Some were shown posthumously at documenta 1 (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III in 1964 in Kassel.
While his work did not receive any further attention for a long time, it has been increasingly appreciated in numerous exhibitions since the turn of the millennium. For example, in the important Cézanne exhibition Aufbruch in die Moderne at the Folkwang Museum in Essen at the turn of the year 2005, some of Derain's paintings from his Fauvist and Cubist phases were shown for the first time in Germany.