Kees van Dongen

Cailler collects ion, Geneva
Galerie A. Gattlen, Lausanne

Lausanne, Galerie A. Gattlen, Monet à Picasso, 1963, no. 5

Louis Chaumeil, Van Dongen, L'homme et l'artiste- La vie et l'oeuvre, Geneva, 1967, no. 114, illustrated n.p.

Canvas has been wax lined. Minor, stable horizontal cracking to surface. Under UV light: inpainting along top, left, and right edges to address frame abrasion, as well as scattered strokes in red background in upper register, particularly just above flowers. A few dots of inpainting to right and left of flowers, otherwise fine. Work is in fairly good condition.
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L'Arum epitomizes the vibrant palette of van Dongen's Fauvist works and provides a unique approach to the traditional still-life genre. Flowers erupt from a striped vase and dominate the canvas, transforming a typically unassuming subject into a dynamic composition. Paint is applied in thick brushstrokes and color assumes an expressive and highly charged quality. The artist has balanced the bursts of color in the upper half of the picture plane with the deep red of the background. The highly saturated hues van Dongen employs reflect his affiliation with the Fauves. According to Denys Sutton, "The artist's break-through occurred at a t.mes when Fauvism was the dominant style in France...In 1904 van Dongen was in touch with two of its principal exponents - Derain and Vlaminck. A good deal of critical ink has been spilled over the question whether or not van Dongen may be considered as one of the founders of this effective and ebullient style...In the final analysis the question is not all that relevant. What is important is that he was a painter who found a natural means of expression in the use of thickly applied color - bold stark reds, greens and blues, colors which, he once pointed out, held for him an almost symbolical meaning" (William E. Steadman and Denys Sutton, Cornelius Theodorus Marie Van Dongen (exhibition catalogue), Tucson, Arizona, 1971, pp. 20-28).

Van Dongen was little known to the public as a painter until his contribution to the sensational Salon d'Automne of 1905 brought him popular acclaim. By 1908, van Dongen's paintings had begun to receive widespread recognition. For a brief t.mes , he was represented by the renowned dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, who organized exhibitions of his work in Düsseldorf and Paris. Later that year, he was taken up by the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, which represented many of the most prominent artists of the twentieth century, including Bonnard, Matisse, and Modigliani. Van Dongen's predilection for bold color and energetic compositions also prompted the artists' group Die Brücke to invite him to exhibit in a show of their work in Germany.

In L'Arum, the color is deployed freely, the contrasts are sharp – it is, as in his earlier Fauvist manner, a vibrant pictorial interpretation of the visual reality of the still life.