Maurice De Vlaminck "animated Landscape"

Maurice de Vlaminck, pseudonym of Maurice Edmond Devlaeminck, born in Paris on April 4, 1876 and died in Rueil-la-Gadelière (Eure-et-Loir) on October 11, 1958, was a French painter, ceramist, engraver and writer. He distinguished himself in the Fauvist and Cubist movements. Painter of figures, portraits, nudes, landscapes, animated landscapes, urban landscapes, interiors, still lifes, flowers and fruits, gouache painter, watercolorist, engraver, designer and illustrator, he is also a writer, publishing 26 books: novels, essays and collection of poems. Maurice de Vlaminck's parents - his mother a pianist of Lorraine origin and his father Edmond Devlaeminck, violinist - emigrated from Flanders to France. His younger sister, Solange de Vlaminck, was a film star for a time, and, having become blind, she married after the First World War Élie-Joseph Bois, fickle, editor-in-chief of Le Petit Parisien through whom the painter gained notoriety, before divorcing and falling into poverty from which her brother then refuses to help her. He spent his childhood in Vésinet but especially in Chatou from 1893 to 1905 where he trained with a local painter Henri Rigalon and where he created his first works. He painted his first paintings around 1893, but initially earned his living as a violinist and, sometimes, by winning bicycle races. He married Suzanne Berly in 1896, with whom he had three daughters, including Madeleine. Vlaminck is an autodidact who refuses to train academically by copying in museums so as not to lose or fade his inspiration. On June 18, 1900, during a train derailment, he met André Derain who remained his friend for life. They rented a studio together in Chatou, in the current Maison Levanneur which housed the National Art Image Publishing Center (Cneai) until 2017. Derain left the joint workshop a year later, but he maintained a close epistolary relationship with Vlaminck. Derain found Vlaminck around 1904. This period (1900-1905) remained a difficult period financially for the painter, responsible for his family, and he was obliged to scrape old paintings to recover the canvases. Furthermore, it was at this time that he published two novels with a decadent, even pornographic, aesthetic. That said, his real passion remains linked to primitive art and Fauvism. In 1905, he moved to Rueil-Malmaison where he remained until 1914, while Derain moved to the South, like many artists of that time. Vlaminck chose to stay in the Paris region, perhaps out of taste, but also probably due to lack of means. That year, he participated in his first Salon des Indépendants. Vlaminck is one of the painters who caused a scandal during the autumn salon of 1905, known as “La cage aux fauves”, with Henri Matisse, André Derain and Raoul Dufy. The painting dealer Ambroise Vollard took an interest in his work the following year, bought numerous paintings from him and dedicated an exhibition to him in 1908. Vlaminck also established links with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, another famous art dealer. He also began working as a ceramist. He made several international exhibitions during these years. Vlaminck, having three daughters at the time, was not sent to the front during the First World War. He is assigned to a factory in the Paris region. At the end of the conflict, he divorced and remarried in 1928 to Berthe Combe, who gave him two daughters: Edwige and Godelieve (1927-2021). From 1925 he moved to Rueil-la-Gadelière where he remained until his death in 1958, at the age of 82 (his wife also died there, in 1974 at the age of 82).