fauve // biography

L E X I C O N
A R T I S T S

FAUVE
(Biography)
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What is Fauve?
At the Paris Salon d'Automne of 190$, the works of a number of painters were hung together in one room: these were Matisse, Marquet, Derain, Vlaminck, Rouault, Manguin, Camoin, Jean Puy and Othon Friesz. Their works, full of distortions and flat patterns and painted in violent colour, created a furore, and a critic dubbed them collectively 'Les Fauves' (the wild beasts). They were not, until then - or even afterwards - a particularly coherent group. Matisse came to be regarded as their leader, possibly because he was older and not unwilling, but the parts of the group had various origins. Matisse, Marquet, Rouault and Camoin had all been pupils of Gustave Moreau at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts; Matisse and Marquet had often worked together, strongly influenced by Expressionism; the others adhered temporarily, mostly out of rebellion against the academic system and because their brightly coloured works could be hung in no other company. In 1906 Dufy, and in 1907 Braque and Metzinger, exhibited with them, but by 1908 the Fauves had fallen apart as a group and a number of its members had seceded to Cubism.
Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books)
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