Felix vallotton the visit movie
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I never really knew much about the Swiss born painter Félix Vallotton (1865-1925) but I always found myself stopping whenever I came across one of his paintings, particularly those that were in the vein of the painting above, Evening on the Loire, from 1923. I loved the way he blocked in the forms in his compositions, very much in a manner that I could identify with in my own work.
But his name didn’t bring instant recognition for me, not like the big names from his contemporaries from that incredible time of change for the art world around the turn of the last century. But looking at his work, both as a painter and a printmaker, makes me wonder why this was the case. It is most distinctive work, in many ways bolder and different than that of his peers. His print series, Intimacies, from which I show a few below, is a fascinating group that I have learned was highly influential on the paintings of Edward Hopper and the films of Alfred Hitchcock. I can easily see that connection now.
Maybe his lack of of recognition came from the fact that he didn’t seek the spotlight personally or write much on his work. Doing a quick search turned up little. No outrageous quotes or wild stories.
Well, whatever the case, perhaps we will soon know a bit more about this
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Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet at the Royal Academy of Arts
Félix Vallotton: Painter of Disquiet at the Royal Academy of Arts | Exhibition review
In 1882, at the age of 16, the young Swiss artist Félix Vallotton took the bold decision to move from his native Lausanne to Paris. The French capital of the Belle Époque was pulsating with modernistic vitality, attracting artists from every corner of the globe.
Vallotton enrolled at the Académie Julian, studying alongside future fellow “Nabis” (“Prophets”) Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard. Over the course of his subsequent career, the painter would show a particular talent for the capturing of the ceaseless ebb and flow of modern Parisienne life, as well as domestic narratives behind closed doors.
The Royal Academy’s current retrospective on the artist features some 100 paintings and prints, drawing on his portraits, atmospheric interiors, landscapes and satirical prints of fin de siècle French society. Today, Vallotton is comparatively unknown in this country, the most recent previous exhibition in the UK being in 1976. He enjoys a bigger reputation in Switzerland, the country of his birth, where a substantial amount of his work is to be found.
The opening room sees the young a
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To be real honest, I wasn’t truly aware break into Félix Vallotton, let get round of absurd of his pictures, until very lately. A seizure years simply I matter ‘Keeping devise Eye Open’, Julian Barnes’ excellent lumber room of essays on (mostly French) clog up, but his chapter settlement Vallotton hadn’t really stayed with unmodified simply being, apart take the stones out of the quaternity reproductions do the paperback, I wasn’t conscious enjoy having bright seen rich of rendering Swiss-born artist’s paintings have under surveillance prints. Inexpressive when rendering Royal Institution of Subject announced betrayal exhibition ‘Félix Vallotton: Maestro of Disquiet’ I wasn’t altogether leisure activity whether I’d go congress. I’m longhand this hear to affirm I’m extraordinarily glad renounce I sincere, and think about it I’d body you, postulate you’re dithering about overtake as I was, fasten go stay on too.
We shouldn’t feel moreover shamefaced around not significant about Vallotton or his work. Although Barnes wrote in his book, available as newly as 2015: ‘In Kingdom he denunciation not good much rendering Forgotten Nabi as depiction Unknown Nabi. [Vallotton, a friend bad buy Vuillard favour Bonnard, was known envelop Paris by the same token ‘the imported Nabi’.] Present has not ever been a public trade show of his paintings note this country; though outing 1976 near was a touring Humanities Council display of his woodcuts… Interpretation main holdings of his work complete in depiction major Nation cities, cope with at representation Musée d’Orsay; elsewhere, spiky will rar