Blue Vase, Anemones, 1941 by Louis Valtat (French, 1869 - 1952)
Louis Valtat
French, 1869 - 1952

Blue Vase, Anemones

1941
Oil on canvas
13 1/4 x 16 1/2 inches (33.66 x 41.91 centimeters)
Framed: 22 1/2 x 26 inches (57.15 x 66.04 centimeters)

Signed lower right: L. Valtat

SOLD

Provenance:
James Vigeveno Galleries, Ojai, CA

Literature:
Jean Valtat, Louis Valtat, 1869-1952: Catalogue de l’oeuvre peint, vol. I (Editions Ides et Calendes Neuchatel, 1977): p. 300, no. 2691

In Blue Vase, Anemones, a bright, topaz-colored vase is full of the vibrantly colored blossoms. While the subject is clear, Valtat suppresses the representation of form, giving importance to the color and decorative potential of the work. Blooms are painted in strokes of red, violet and white impasto, brushed in jagged strokes over a thin, black background. Petals and flowers lose their individual forms and become masses of color and texture. Thick impasto or a slight change in the direction of a brushstroke indicated the turn of a petal, or the curve of a form. The background is loosely represented in three neutral fields of black, brown and white. Visual interest is increased by the texture of brushstrokes and canvas, but never challenges the decorative precedence of the vase of anemones.

Louis Valtat (French, 1869 - 1952)

A leading founder of the Fauvist movement, Louis Valtat was an independent and versatile painter. Fauvist principles required a total liberation of local color in favor of palette of unmixed paint used straight from the tube, often applied with firm, even violent brushwork. Forms are simplified and flattened, giving precedence to a patterned, decorative surface. Although Valtat had painted in this manner for several years, it wasn't until his exhibition in the 1905 Salon d'Automne that the term ?Fauves,? meaning ?wild beasts,? came into use, coined by a prominent critic to describe many of the artists exhibiting that year, including Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain, Manguin, Dongen, Friesz, Puy and Valtat.

Selected Museum Collections:
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseilles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg; Musée de l?Annonciade, Saint-Tropez; Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse; Musée des Augustins, Toulouse; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Troyes; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL

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