Félix Vallotton Exhibition
Michael Werner Gallery
This event has ended.
Michael Werner Gallery presents an exhibition of paintings by Swiss artist Félix Vallotton (Lausanne, 1865 – Paris, 1925). The exhibition features portraits of women, primarily nudes, and is the first gallery exhibition in New York devoted to the artist's paintings.
Félix Vallotton's paintings do not give pleasure easily. In portraiture he is not a flashy virtuoso and his nudes are not "sexy", at least not in any typical fashion. His paint handling is careful and deliberate; his palette, subdued and a little flat; his surfaces, slow and at times somewhat dry. His intense, unforgiving attention to detail lends a palpable realism to the paintings. Enlivened by a thinly veiled eroticism, his subtly voyeuristic scenes leave one feeling more than a little uncomfortable. This distinguishing quality in Vallotton is perhaps attributable to the artist’s method of combining sketches and photographs to compose a picture (encouraged by Vuillard and Bonnard, who also used photographs in the preparation of their paintings, Vallotton made frequent use of a Kodak). This process is more often associated with another of his contemporaries, Francis Picabia, yet Vallotton does not share Picabia's willful exuberance and lightness of touch, nor are his paintings concerned with any exploration of the relationship between painting and photography. Masterfully, Vallotton deployed an academic approach to create a unique psychological edge in his art. His surprisingly "pre-modern" qualities set Vallotton apart from his contemporaries and make his works appear fresh and worthy of consideration today.
[Image: Félix Vallotton "Le Printemps" (1908) Oil on canvas, 45 3/4 x 28 3/4 in.]
Media
Schedule
from February 04, 2010 to April 10, 2010