JEAN DUFY

The authenticity of the work has been confirmed by Jacques Bailly, Paris, 6 September 2016.

Provenance: Private collection, Switzerland.

Exhibition: Cologne 1958, Jean Dufy. Gemälde Galerie Abels, 1 October - 30 November, no. 9 (with ill.).

Jean Dufy’s early painting is dominated by colour harmonies in muted brown, blue and red tones. After his move to Paris around 1920, his style underwent a rapid change. His acquaintances in Paris with Derain, Braque and Picasso, as well as his encounter with Fauvism, influenced his painting decisively. His real teacher, however, was his elder brother Raoul. Jean developed a pictorial language which is characterised by bright and carefree colours and an opening up of the pictorial space. He succeeded in combining various characteristics of Impressionism, Cubism and Fauvism, and in developing his own style from that. His works, and in particular his still lifes, are characterised initially by shimmering surfaces composed of juxtaposed colour squares and bold light compositions. Here we see the influence of his brother. In the course of his career, he gradually broke up this systematic treatment of space in terms of colour squares, and developed an independent pictorial language.
The present still life is dominated by a gentle harmony of pastel-like tones, which are cut through with bright accents of red. The still life elements are set apart from the background simply by means of loose contouring, and reveal a spatial quality which is part of Jean Dufy’s unmistakable pictorial language.