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Footsteps of the Artists

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Footsteps of the Artists

Category Archives: Study Art in France

Art Students and Collectors in Paris

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Posted by patwa in American Artists in France, Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Normandy, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France, Women in Paris

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19th c., 20th c., Alice B. Toklas, Americans in Paris, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, beatniks, bohemia, cafe-life, Gertrude Stein, Montparnasse, poets, Sarah Stein, Women in Paris, Yves Klein

Art Students in Paris During the Golden Age

During the later decades of the 19th century and into the 20th century, Americans made up the largest group of foreigners studying art in Paris.  They worked with the academic painters and sculptors, learning classical style.  Generally, they did not study with the Impressionists.  During the 1890s, hundreds of Americans exhibited in the annual Salons where they competed favorably gaining medals and sales.Woman's Art Journal cover image

The American Art Association or Club provided lodgings for visiting artists in an old school building at 131 Blvd. du Montparnasse with a garden that was also used for stables. Over the decades, the Art Association bounced around Montparnasse to various locations. The next was 82 rue Notre Dame des Champs. In 1897 it relocated to Number 2 Impasse Conti.  By 1906 the association moved to 74 rue Notre Dame des Champs and in 1909 to the rue Jaseph Bara.  It closed in the early 1930s.  There were other facilities that specialized in housing visiting American art students near the various art academies.

Unclothed woman posing for art class.

Women’s art class with female model. École des Arts Décoratifs, Paris.

The American’s Girls’ Club at 4 rue de Chevreuse in the 6th Arr. opened in 1893. The boarding house provided meals, French lessons and social activities for young American women in Paris to study art.  Académie Vitti, 49 Blvd. du Montparnasse,  admitted women and included naked male models in life studies classes, unusual at the time.  F. W. MacMonnies, Whistler’s earlier studio partner, taught at Académie Vitti.

John Singer Sargent‘s studio was decorated to replicate a grand salon with hardwood floors, elaborate fireplace mantels and masses of expensive textiles.  But it was a rented property at 41 Blvd. Berthier, not his own asset.  The scandal attached to his portrait of the grand lady in black with all the skin exposed discouraged conservative patrons.  Sargent moved to England and continued his career as a society portrait painter.

Gertrude Stein in Paris

The Stein siblings — Gertrude and Leo — were living in the house-studio at 27 rue de Fleurus. Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude’s partner, moved in at a later date. Their open house parties attracted artists, writers, patrons and characters, especially Americans. Michael Stein and his wife Sarah Stein lived at 58 rue Madame where their Saturday night gatherings cultivated a salon scene.  All the Steins bought up paintings by Paul Cèzanne, Renoir, Gauguin.  Michael and Sarah were soon onto Matisse, who was supported by them and persuaded by Sarah Stein to open an art school.  Leo was more conservative in building his art collection.  Gertrude Stein focused her collecting efforts on Picasso.

The public garden Square Yves Klein at the southern end of rue Campagne Premiére honors the intense post-WWII modernist who experimented with a particular blue color that bears his name, International Klein Blue.  During the artist’s short, active career, his studio was at 9 rue Campagne Premiére, later becoming number 24.

Yves Klein's hand is International Blue Klein

Yves Klein’s right hand is the color he invented International Blue Klein.

Born in 1928 in Nice, Yves Klein started out in the martial arts, earning the highest honor in judoka and lived in Japan for more than a year. He worked hard and died young of a heart attack on June 6, 1962 aged 34.

 Nearby:

Theatre Lucernaire – 53 rue Notre Dame des Champs, 75006 Paris.  Art house theater, cafe and exhibition space.

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Artists in Collioure

Friday, July 19, 2013

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Catalonia, Study Art in France, Writers in France

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Casals, Céret, Collioure, Dalí, Dufy, Gris, Hemingway, Kisling, Matisse, Picasso, Prades, Sitges, Utrillo, writers

Watercolor of brightly colored houses and boat in a small port.

Watercolor sketch of Collioure, France © L Peat O’Neil, 2001.

The Colors of Catalonia, by Virginie Raguenaud, offers a fascinating look at the artists who lived and painted in Catalonia.  She writes about crisscrossing the region following traces of famous painters — Matisse, Soutine, Gauguin, Picasso, Miró —  to name just a few, and of many other writers, poets, architects and musicians who found sustenance for creativity in the dramatic vistas of the region.

The book’s title suggests the magnificent light which softens the craggy coastline and brightens the seaports. I plan to use this book for future travel to Prades, Céret and Cadaqués.

Notre-Dame-des-Anges in  Collioure. Sketch © L. Peat O'Neil, 2001.

Notre-Dame-des-Anges in Collioure. Sketch © L. Peat O’Neil, 2001.

The book includes a short biography for each of the painters, sculptors, film makers,art collectors and writers.  Some of the names might not be widely known as Georges Braque, André Derain or Salvador Dalí, which makes this new book all the more attractive as a guide to regional travel and art history.

Resources:

* Collioure Art Residency

* Tourist Office of Collioure

A Walk in Montparnasse

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Hotels in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France, Writers in France

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art, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, people-watching, poets, Renoir, walk in Paris

Walking Around Montparnasse, Paris

The name was a bit of a joke, a sly reference to Mont Parnassas, the highest point near Delphi, mythic seat of the god Apollo and the Muses, inspiration of poetry and song.  The topography south of the Seine is considerably flatter than Delphi, but the high-minded notion matched the aspirations of the writers and painters who scrambled to Paris to follow their muse.

It wasn’t until the 20th century that Montparnasse suffered the contractions and upheavals that changed parts of the right bank so radically during the 19th century.  When the boulevard construction directed by Baron  Haussmann churned neighborhoods on the right bank, Montparnasse was too sleepy to be included in the revamping.  The hidden neighborhoods, rustic stables and factory lofts offered quarters an artist could afford well into the 1960’s.  But then, the post World War II boom claimed low-rise blocks for office towers, shopping centers and transportation hubs, a process that accelerated during the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Some of the artists’ hideaways in Montparnasse still exist, despite construction of office towers, roads and apartment complexes.  Recently, a friend and I discovered an impasse off Ave. du Maine, one of those dead-end alleys lined with artists’ studios and galleries.  We were in search of a photo exhibition announced in ‘Time Out Paris,’ but the show was still being hung and not yet open to the public.  Instead, we prowled along the passageway, peeking into vacant studios, eyeing the one used by a floral arranging business and wondering what type of social pull it took to rent one of these historic spots. Surely, we realized, this was the same artists’ courtyard at 21, Ave. du Maine where Marie Vassilieff opened her studio as a canteen for artists in 1915.  Vassilieff served soup, dinners, fellowship and a helping hand during the terrible war years.

La Ruche, Artists' Studios. Montparnasse, Paris

La Ruche, Artists’ Studios. Montparnasse, Paris

Another remnant still standing is the curious building called La Ruche.  An early artists’ collective, La Ruche, (‘the Hive’) hides in the rue de Dantzig  (Metro: Convention, 15th arr.) a studio-refuge for artists and artisans.  The space was inaugurated in 1902 by Alfred Boucher who had salvaged small round wooden structures made by Gustave Eiffel for the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition. The recycled wooden buildings were remade into miniscule studios stacked on top of each other.

Art Academies and Immigrants

Montparnasse was a neighborhood for art students, dealers and shops selling pigments and other supplies for the students enrolled in nearby art academies.  Henri Matisse opened an art academy in 1908 at 33 Blvd. des Invalides.  Matisse was a busy teacher, impresario and artists during those years.

The Colarossi School, established in the 1870’s, took over the Academy Suisse and moved to the courtyard of 10 rue de la Grande Chaumiere.  The Academy Julian differed from other art academies: women were admitted to the school and permitted to draw nude males in life study studio classes.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

During the years of revolution, hardship and war, Paris provided the flame of salvation for Europe’s refugees.  As the city of light and reason, the city drew immigrants from troubled countries to the east, people fleeting from failing monarchies, war and repressive governments.

Some left the Russia and the territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire before World War I.  During the war and following the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the floodgates opened to immigrants.  An international wave of immigrants from dozens of countries arrived after the Armistice in November, 1918 bringing artists, sculptors, writers and political poets.  The international community settled in Montparnasse. A list of these artists reads like a museum collection: Chagall, Dobrinsky, Epstein, Rivera, Matisse, Leger, Modigliani, Laurencin. Some are lesser known:  Indenbaum and the Polish-born Moise Kisling form the nucleus of the Ecole de Paris, the melting pot of all the refugees and émigrés.

Writers who lived in Paris at the time note in their memoirs that  Montparnasse was different after World War I.  The streets were lit up with

theater and cinema marquees.  The “Triangle of Gold of Montparnasse,” as it was called, was marked by three beacon-cafes: La Closerie des Lilas, La Rotonde and Le Dome.

While the big cafes attracted big spenders, the artists hung out there too.   When La Coupole opened, people wandered in and out round the clock.  La Rotonde attracted art dealers, writers, journalists and politicians.  Modigliani frequented Le Dome café intent on selling drawings to anyone with money.  Henry Miller caged meals from friends who willingly bought him dinner for his entertaining conversation.

Paris Cafe. Photo ©  P. Mikelbank

Paris Cafe. Photo © P. Mikelbank

The cafes became second homes for the artists and writers who didn’t have the space, seats or heat to accommodate clutches of friends.  Exhibitions were organized in the cafes to attract customers and newspaper attention.  The first exposition in a cafe was organized by Auguste Clerge, in the Cafe du Parnasse.  At just about the same time, a group of artist friends organized a show in Montmarte and in a Latin Quarter cafe called la Comete.  Cafe Petit Napolitain mounted a show called “Boite a Couleurs” and another show was held at Cameleon.  Once these art shows in cafes proved the artists could make a little money and the cafe owners would increase traffic, other cafes followed suit.

In due time, dealers snapped up the work of the best artists.  One of the most successful gallery owners, Berthe Weill steadily expanded her clientele, befriending artists and clients in the grand cafes. At first working out of her home, she moved through successive stores in rue Victor Masse, rue Taitbout and rue Lafitte. Showing women artists as well as men, she celebrated her 25th anniversary in 1926 when her artists held a huge fete for her at Dagorno.

Zadkine Museum, 100 bis, rue d’Assas, in the 6th arrondisment, demonstrates that even as late as the 1920’s and 1930’s there were areas of Montparnasse with real gardens, stately trees and outbuildings.  Cubist sculptor Ossip Zadkine constructed a folly in the backyard atelier, his sylvan corner in the middle of Montparnasse.

The neighborhood revolved around the Gare Montparnasse.  Trains departing this station headed to Brittany so it’s no surprise that the artists who lived in Montparnasse turned to the Atlantic for en plein air painting during the 1880’s and afterwards.  The Bretons and other western country people brought their fish and victuals to the city.  Bistro de la Gare, 59 Blvd. Montparnasse dates to that time period, with Art Nouveau features that gave it a place on the historic monuments registry.

 

Montmartre Up :: Pigalle Down

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Artists Near Paris, Artists' Graves, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France

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art studios in Paris, beatniks, bohemia, cafe-life, design, Dufy, painting, people-watching, poets, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Valadon, Vincent Van Gogh, walk in Paris, writers

Throughout the Belle Epoque, Pigalle, the neighborhood at the foot of Montmarte hill,

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautred, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

was the place to go for cheap nightlife. Pigalle and Montmartre still have a reputation for providing any kind of excitement for hire.

Back then the village was a mix of local folks and artists, writers and noisy upstarts who wrote poetry or music or manifestos.  The lot of them were anarchists to the bourgeois. Down on the streets of Pigalle or high up on Montmartre, the artists’ eccentric behavior, erratic hours and street parties were tolerated, even encouraged.  Who was to stop them, anyway?

Gaining definition after the Revolution, Montmartre was created a jurisdiction in 1790 with 400 residents. By 1857 there were 36,000 citizens in the village and it was annexed by Paris three years later, in 1860. Baron Haussmann’s grand boulevards opened the densely populated urban areas of the city below and made public transit feasible. But the steep hill of Montmartre  remained relatively untouched until construction on Sacre-Coeur Basilica began in 1875. The economic constraints and political disarray left after the Franco-Prussion War and the Paris Commune in 1871 played a role in slowing down the hell-bent passions of artists lured to Montmartre.  Later in the 20th century, after World War II, visitors to the massive Basilica with the striking mosque-like towers and bulbous white dome spilled into the artist’s quarter of Montmarte, bringing the by-products of tourism with them.

The streets were narrow and twisting, lined with worker’s houses and small shops. Even today, Montmarte’s alleys and streets defy a grid system, curving to fit topography or the clusters of former farm houses. The neighborhood was changed radically by the end of the first world war when the cathedral was completed.

Artists and budding photographers searched for village characters as subjects. Montmarte magnified the simple country life with the noble windmills and rustic villagers. Above the city, away from the bourgeoisie,  Montmarte also  embraced 19th century sexual libertine mores in the free-wheeling cabarets filled with comely jeune filles.

In Hippolyte Bayard’s photographs, the most extensive visual record of mid-19th century Montmarte available, the windmills dominate the horizon. Green patches are squeezed between rustic shuttered houses, shops and music halls. Laundry hangs out of upper windows. The white dust from the quarry covers the cobblestones.

To follow the footsteps of the 19th and early 20th century artists in Montmarte, start at the vineyard, rue des Saules and rue St. Vincent. The same vines were there when Vincent Van Gogh trudged up the hill to his favorite dance hall in the rue Rustique. And when the dwarf legged Toulouse-Lautrec stumbled along, tapping his cane on the paving stones, ears filled with brassy cabaret notes of the Moulin de la Galette or the Moulin Rouge, the scent of the sweating can-can girls in his nose.  A plaque in the vineyard honors Poulbot (1879-1946) who painted the children who tended the vines.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/67.187.108

Paris Nightclub scene by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec

Push open the door at 22, rue de Saules. Imagine the racket at the Lapin Agile a hundred years ago! Glasses clink, palms slap wooden tables, hoots of laughter, songs born in a surfeit of drink and rebellion.  And what a mix of languages – French, Italian, English, German, Catalan, Dutch, Russian.

Inside, Andre Gill decorated the walls with paintings and posters about the crimes of Troppman, a Second Empire renegade, who became a popular hero.  Outside, the old sign of an amusing rabbit jumping into a cookpot and holding a bottle of wine has endured till this day. With so many writers and artists, some of whom called themselves the Apaches in sympathy with Native Americans, with brilliant wordsmiths like Verlaine and Rimbaud hanging out there, we can assume jokes and stories flew fast.  Huddled at a corner table, they might kid the barmaid: Was the owner Madame Adele,  Monsieur Gill’s agile rabbit, or he, her’s?

Aristide Bruant, the innovative singer, journalist, publisher and activist, bought the cabaret in 1903.  Not long afterwards, customers flocked to Lapin Agile from Cabaret Zut in neighboring Place Emile Goudeau, Bruant also persuaded the famous Frede away from Zut to work at the Lapin Agile.   The artists frequented places where they knew they could speak freely and run a line of credit.

The Bateau-Lavoir, which burned in 1970, but has been restored, contained several artists’ studios.  Picasso, Brraque, Gris and others worked there and the site is considered the birthplace of Cubism.  Picasso and his Spanish friends and anarchists carried on the boho tradition in Montmartre until WWI with a cast of characters that included the writers Max Jacob and Apollinaire.  Early in his career, Picasso painted on the walls of Lapin Agile; did he talk the owner into settling a bar bill with a mural?

Artists met their models through their friends and congregated in the guinguettes and cafes.  An enterprising young lady in need of employment might plant herself in a cafe and ‘interview’ prospective employers.

One such mademoiselle was Suzanne Valadon, a part time model beginning to try her hand at painting. Suzanne cut a unique path through the established method of learning to paint; she did not hunch over a palate in the Louvre copying the canvases of great painters past. Following her instincts, she developed a strong individual hand. Degas admired her early drawings and the two artists became life-long friends.

Valadon had been an acrobatic dancer, but a fall that injured her back cut short that career. Her first serious modeling assignment was for Puvis de Chavannes. Work with Renoir followed. Both met her at the Cabaret des Assassins (later, the Lapin Agile).

Maurice Utrillo Tomb, St. Vincent Cemetery, Montmartre

Maurice Utrillo Tomb, St. Vincent Cemetery, Montmartre

Valadon herself was a child of Montmartre and grew up on Blvd. Rochechouart. Crossing Montmartre to see friends, visit her studio, buy food and supplies, sometimes she took the quickest route and cut through the small Cemetery of St. Vincent where her artist son Maurice Utrillo would be buried in 1955.

Montmartre’s church of St. Peter, at Place du Tertre, founded as a monastery during the Middle Ages, has a cornerstone laid in 1133 by Dame Adelaide of Savoie, Queen of France and wife of King Louis VI. Over the centuries, the church has been a Benedictine Abbey and a parish church. Architectural enrichments include Roman columns, remnants from a temple that likely once graced the site, vaulting from the 1400’s and Romanesque walls with stained glass windows. St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, is believed to have vowed to create the order while in this church. A tile plaque near the entrance honors “Notre Dame de Montmartre, Notre Dame de Beaute, patronne des artistes.”

The church holds much of Suzanne Valadon’s history. Like many French women of her time and class, she was seriously devout and attended mass daily during the last decades of her life. Her funeral procession left from St. Peter’s.

Whatever her early indiscretions, Valadon drank deeply of life’s pleasures and used her talents wisely. Through the early years of the 20th century, mother and son lived in rue Tourlaque where Toulouse-Lautrec had a studio for some time.  Some say the Toulouse-Lautrec and Valadon were lovers, more likely they were devoted friends.

Antique postcard of 12 rue Cortot, Montmartre.

Antique postcard of 12 rue Cortot, Montmartre.

By the mid 1920’s, Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon, and the rest of their family lived at 12 rue Cortot, now the Museum of Montmartre.  Paintings and memorabilia in the museum show the life of an artist in the quarter and especially as it played out in cafes and cabarets.

Many artists lived or worked at 12 rue Cortot over the decades, including Renoir and Emile Bernard and later, the fauvist painter Raoul Dufy.  Emile Bernard never achieved the popularity or fame of his colleagues, though he started painting under Fernand Cormon’s direction and befriended Gauguin and Van Gogh. Emile Bernard painted with Gauguin during the summer of 1886 in Pont-Aven, Brittany and with Van Gogh the following year at Asnieres where Van Gogh took a studio.

Place du Tertre, Montmartreen.wikipedia.com

Place du Tertre, Montmartre
en.wikipedia.com

By the early decades of the 1900’s, the artists and writers had expanded their turf, and many shifted to Montparnasse. Bohemian Montmarte of the 1920’s continued the libertine tradition.  Artists still worked there because even into the 1960’s, Montmarte rooms were cheap, an artist’s urban paradise.  Radical innovators from all over the globe flocked to Paris, every artist’s hometown.

Behind this simacrulum of artists at work there are remnants of the history of artists who once lived in Montmarte.  The rents are far too steep for artists to live or work there now.  And the vendors at the easles in Place du Tetre are mostly just window-dressing to create an artistic atmosphere to please the tourists.

Walking Resources – Map of Montmartre

Toulouse-Lautrec in Montmartre

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artist's Studios, Artists in Paris, Nightclubs and bars in Paris, Restaurants in Paris, Study Art in France, Writers in France

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19th century, art studios in Paris, artist cafes, bohemia, cafe-life, Degas, design, feminists, painting, people-watching, Toulouse-Lautrec, Utrillo, Valadon, walk in Paris

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/67.187.108

Englishman at the Moulin Rouge by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1892.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, along with Maurice Utrillo, is the epitome of a Montmartre artist. He is identified with the lifestyle and painted the scenes and people that are icons of  Montmartre. He drowned his health in the pleasurable toxins so readily available in Montmartre.

Toulouse-Lautrec’s lithograph posters, paintings, pastels and drawings depict the dance hall girls, the chanteuses, the whores and waiters and their customers, the haute bourgeois or visitors from more tightly laced societies like England and the United States.

Breaking away from his colleagues, Toulouse-Lautrec honed his drawing skills and pioneered innovative techniques using empty space, color and stark lines, as bold as the subjects he followed so closely.  He loved the performers, the dancers, prostitutes and pleasure prowlers of the belle epoque.

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/67.187.108

Paris Nightclub scene by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec

Early in his career he studied with other young artists with Fernand Cormon in the Cormon’s atelier-school at 10 rue Constance.  He met artist Louis Anquetin, who was interested in subjects that attracted Toulouse-Lautrec.

For a while, Toulouse-Lautrec lived at 19, bis rue Fontaine with Rene Grenier and Lily Grenier, a model for Edgar Degas who had a studio in the same building. The courtyard at 19 is still bathed in sunlight and there is a line of low studio rooms on the left. No official plaque reports that Toulouse‑ Lautrec and the Grenier couple lived there, however.

In 1887, Toulouse-Lautrec left Cormon’s instruction and took his own space at 27 rue Caulaincourt where Dr. Henri Bourges, a childhood friend, lived. Toulouse-Lautrec stayed with him until the doctor married in 1893.  A few years later, when Toulouse-Lautrec’s health was clearly declining, his mother rented an apartment in Rue de Douai to give him a proper home.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

In the Studio. Academy Julian, Paris. by Marie Bashkirtseff, 1881.

At number 30, rue Fontaine, not far from the Grenier residence, Toulouse-Lautrec rented a room in 1896 while he painted in a studio at rue Tourlaque shared with Suzanne Volquin. The crumbling facade at  number 30 would have been a bourgeoisie building at that time.   The Academy Julian was founded in 1868 by painter Rodolphe Julian, and the first to permit women as students. American impressionist Lilla Cabot Perry and Russian-born Marie Bashkirtseff were students.

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautred, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Jane Avril lithograph by H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1893. Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.

Toulouse-Lautrec shifted his attention to the Moulin Rouge, 82 Boulevard de Clichy, when the can‑can became all the rage in the 1890’s. Dozens of can-can dancers still kick up a storm on the Moulin Rouge stage, billed as the “greatest cabaret in the world.”

Footsteps of the Artists :: Kandinsky

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, Artists' Graves, Paris, Study Art in France

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art history, bohemia, design, painting

Vassily Kandinsky

Born in Moscow in 1866,  Vassilly Kandinsky  (also spelled Wassilly) was raised in comfort and educated to be a lawyer. After practicing law for a few years, Kandinsky started painting at age 30 and pursued art as his passion thereafter.

In Russia up until death of Lenin, artists enjoyed favored status. Creativity was encouraged. Artists produced and their ranks multiplied. Kandinsky’s wild images were strange and wondrous, pushing the use of color to expand consciousness. Much beloved by those who knew him during his lifetime, Kandinsky was a  visionary artist with a global audience for his paintings which are in museum and private collections around the world.

Kandinsky read the occult teachers popular in the early 20th century.  He synthesized evolving precepts of anti-materialism and creativity into his book Concerning the Spiritual in Art published in 1910.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art
by V. Kandinsky

Vassily Kandinsky and his wife Nina moved to Paris in 1933, he came as an exile who’d lost his professorship in Munich after the Nazis closed the school.  They also revoked his German citizenship acquired in 1927.

 

 

 

Vassilly and Nina Kandinsky settled in suburban Neuilly-sur-Seine on the sixth floor of a building overlooking the river.

Early 20th c. view of Paris
Neuilly-sur-Seine in distance

This was the era when Paris warmly welcomed refugees from other parts of Europe and beyond. Foreign artists included: Miro,  Mondrian, Max Ernst, Brancusi, Rivera and many others.

 

 

They lived near the Bois de Boulogne with a view of Mont Valerien. After Liberation Day in 1945, the Mont Valerien property became a monument to those who were executed for work in the French underground resistance to Nazi occupation.

– Bois de Boulogne, Paris 1925

The Russian-French designer Sonia Delaunay and her husband Charles Delaunay were friendly colleagues of the Kandinskys.  Fernand Leger and Jean Arp were also part of their circle, though Leger spent the World War II years teaching at Yale. Kandinsky liked to vacation at Cauterets in the Hautes-Pyrenees.

Kandinsky Color Study

For Kandinsky, the stateless citizen who fled to Paris, success and appreciation came during his lifetime.  There were exhibitions in 1936, 1939, and 1942 at the Gallery Jeanne Bucher.  Nina Kandinsky dubbed 1934-1944 “the years of synthesis”.

The artist became a French citizen in 1939 and died in 1944.  A school in Neuilly-sur-Seine bears his name.  Kandinsky is buried at New Communal Cemetery, Neuilly-sur-Seine, France.
References

* Hilton Kramer on Kandinsky in Paris, The New Criterion, April 1985.

* Francois Le Targat,  Kandinsky, Rizzoli, 1987.

Study Art in Paris

Saturday, May 26, 2012

Posted by patwa in Artists in Paris, France Travel, Paris, Study Art in France

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art, art history, design, education, painting, photography, sculpture

Step into the Paris that seduced artists from all over the world — the Paris of your dreams.  We’ll show you around Paris of the 21st century with an eye to the traces of decades and centuries past. Like the bumbling hero in Woody Allen’s clever film Midnight in Paris, you can step through the veil of time and paint yourself into a living reverie.  Let us be your guide while you experience the captivating scenes and mysteries of the City of Light.

We’ll follow the Footsteps of the Artists all around France, and visit resort locations where artists and writers gathered to savor nature and revive their enthusiasm.

Research for Footsteps of the Artists covers four decades of living and walking through French cities and towns.  We’ll start with a particular focus on Paris by visiting the academies and studios of artists who created in the city that is sometimes called everyone’s hometown of the heart and soul.

Make your dream of painting in France come true.  Explore these selected art study opportunities and create your trip.  Studying art in Paris is possible!

Art Study in Paris

Wice,  an Anglophone organization in Paris, offers art history tours, painting classes and French lifestyle orientation for visitors and residents.

Montparnasse was once the heart of alternative living in Paris.  Écoles de Condé, a design and graphic arts academy, provides an innovative avant-garde atmosphere that echoes the the eras that attracted international artists to Montparnasse from the 1880s to the current day.

Led by a faculty of internationally acclaimed artists, the Parsons in Paris program provides entree to galleries and art collections. Continuing education courses offer a chance to study fashion design, illustration or art.  Experience the best of the world’s art capital by attending one-week drawing and painting sessions tailored for adult learners at the Parsons Studios, 14, rue Letellier on the left bank near the Eiffel Tower.

The American University in Paris offers summer art courses for degree and non-degree students.

Region:  Gascony – Southwest France

The Nadaï Advanced School in Decorative Painting offers high quality teaching in decorative techniques such as  faux marble, patina, murals and trompe l’oeil. Courses are taught by accomplished masters and renowned artists, notably Michel Nadaï, designated a Meilleur Ouvrier de France (best fine artist) by the French government. The courses are taught at the  atelier in the bucolic Southwest region of France.

The Painting School of Montmiral offers courses for small groups of serious students at all levels, beginner to professional.  Students work in the medium of their choice.  The school leader — artist Francis Pratt — has done research into how we use our eyes when painting and drawing and has published widely.

Region: Provence – Southern France

Lacoste, now part of the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), is a unique artistic community located in the medieval village of Lacoste in the Luberon area of Provence. Lacoste’s faculty are part of SCAD. Teaching assistants and visiting artists are chosen for their ability to share their knowledge, skill and personal attitudes.

The Marchutz School offers courses in Painting, Drawing, and Art Criticism for undergraduates and non-traditional students.  The school’s location in Aix-en-Provence offers incomparable landscapes; this is region where Cezanne lived and painted. Students travel around the region and beyond to take full advantage of the landscape, architecture and museums.

Region: Brittany – Northwest France

The Pont-Aven School of Contemporary Art is an international academy of studio arts and art history in the historic artist colony of Pont-Aven in Brittany, on the Atlantic coast west of Paris. Courses focus on the history and avant-garde traditions of the area as well as the ancient standing stones of Carnac.

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