Between the Covers

Unbound. Large poster. Measuring approximately 47" x 62½", professionally linen-backed to 50" x 65½". A few almost imperceptible folds or creases, a couple of tiny areas of loss and two tiny areas of restoration, one short closed marginal tear, all rendered almost invisible by the linen-backing. Bright and near fine, signed by van Dongen in the print.

A striking poster by Dutch-French artist and leading Fauve, Kees van Dongen (1877-1968). The poster advertises the 1929 Salon d'Automn in Paris. Begun in 1903 by the art critic Frantz Jourdain, the Autumn Exhibition showcased the latest trends in art. Over the following years, the Autumn Exhibition would herald the arrivals of the Fauves (1905), the Cubists (1910), and the Montparnasse painters (Chagall, Braque, Modigliani; following World War I).

Van Dongen exhibited paintings at the Autumn Exhibition of 1905, where he and his compatriots were first labeled Fauves. (Specifically, "Donatello chez les fauves," coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles to contrast their "orgy of pure tones" with a Renaissance-style sculpture in the same room. Van Dongen made news during the Autumn Exhibition of 1913-14 when his nude, "The Spanish Shawl (Woman With Pigeons or the Beggars of Love)," was ordered to be removed by police. It now hangs in the Centre Georges Pompidou .

Here van Dongen is in full form, showing a slender nude woman holding a comically oversized artist's palette, in expressive strokes and that "orgy of pure tones" that so offended the critics just a few decades earlier. An excellent example of a van Dongen poster, advertising an important art exhibition, in lovely condition.

Item #456148