Colecciones de arte

Biografy

Daniel Vázquez Díaz
(Nerva, Huelva, 1882 - Madrid, 1969)

Born in Angoulême in 1885, Georges Valmier was five years old when he made his first visit to the place where he would pursue his entire career: the legendary Montmartre. He was the son of a flutist and music teacher who would transmit his passion for this art form to his son.In 1907 he was accepted as a student of the prestigious Luc-Olivier Merson at the Paris School of Fine Arts, bastion of traditional art where he received solid training in an academic atmosphere that he would find “depressing.” Although he has always been considered a loner in the world of modern art, shortly after his admission to the École des Beaux-Arts (School of fine arts) like so many other cubists, he directed his attention to Cézanne, whose 1907 retrospective exhibition he must have visited. In 1910 the impact of Cézanne’s influence on Valmier’s work could be clearly seen: he continued working on the same views of Montmartre that had appeared in his previous paintings, but now the results were much more structured compositions with a greater sense of geometry. From 1911 onward, his increasingly precise knowledge of the cubists’ achievements led him to opt for the prismatic breakdown of subjects such as still lifes, landscapes and figures; the facets that invaded his painting became more and more crystalline, making his painting look somewhat like the work of Feininger. He exhibited with avant-garde painters in the Salons des Indépendants of 1913 and 1914. During this youthful period (1907-1914) Valmier practiced what Denise Bazetoux calls “prismatic cubism” and what André Salmon considered “postcubism” in his review of the Indépendants of 1914.

The First World War forced him to put away his paintbrushes temporarily. Although his studio on the hill of Montmartre was at the center of operations of the cubism whose standard-bearers were his neighbors Braque and Picasso, until the war he had worked alone out of choice. Paradoxically, it was his military posting during the war years that facilitated his first contact with some avant-garde painters, and particularly with one of the key representatives of the so-called Salon Cubism: Albert Gleizes, whose friendship was an important influence on his artistic career. At the same time he met the composer Florent Schmitt, who would become a collector of his work. Together with other writers and artists they would form, as Gleizes himself confessed, a community that was prepared to keep the faith and enthusiasm for spiritual values, even in the midst of chaos.

When he returned to his easel in 1917, after a brief period of hermetic cubism he delved into synthetic cubism, which he approached with the elegant sense of color that characterized him. Apart from that, these cubistic researches launched him on an irreversible journey toward abstraction.From 1918 until 1921 his painting became oriented toward a type of composition that increasingly broke away from real appearance in favor of a play of planes of solid, vivid colors, in compositions dominated by straight lines in which curves were used as counterpoints. He often gave his paintings titles with musical resonances.

An important turning point in Valmier’s developmental path occurred at the beginning of the 1920s, when he joined the circle of painters, musicians and poets who gravitated to Léonce Rosenberg and his gallery, L’Effort Moderne. The art dealer organized his first solo show in January of 1921, and made two suggestions that would be critical for Valmier’s future: the execution of preparatory studies using gouache and the papiers collés technique—two ideas that give rise to a series of small-format works that are considered, because of their freshness and spontaneity, his best work and his greatest contribution to synthetic cubism that was done, moreover, without crossing the threshold of abstraction.

Thus, in 1922 we can see a measured return to figuration, with the appearance of realist stimuli and an increasing presence of the curved line. This was the beginning of a stage that would last until the end of the 1920s. From 1923 onward figures appeared in his landscapes; in1925-1926 the figures bore a certain resemblance to those painted by Léger during the same period. Valmier’s language was now frankly curvilinear; in fact, in the 30s it would culminate in biomorphic abstraction.

From 1922 Valmier also worked intensely in the field of scenography and in the design of theatrical costumes for the innovative Théâtre d’Art et d’Action: he created everything from masks for Marinetti’s theater to sets for the works of writers such as Claudel, Georges Pillement, Max Jacob and Jules Romain. By virtue of this other facet of his creative activity, developed in perfect coherence with his painting and governed by the ideals of integrating art into life, he is considered one of the pioneers in the incorporation of avant-garde language into the design field. Within this same trend, he produced a series of designs for textiles and wallpapers that were brought together in a collection published in 1930. His production in this field also served to build a bridge toward Art Déco. The spirit that animates these creations is presided by ideas such as “the streets are beginning to offer us more enjoyable shows than the ones sent from Rome or the state commissions destined for city halls and provincial museums,” or “the real salons of today are shop windows, and I hope that set designers and theatrical decorators are capable of making good use of this circumstance.” Through these remarks, Valmier showed the natureof his commitment to “modern times.”

In 1928 Valmier responded to the commission that Rosenberg entrusted to several artists to decorate his house on the rue Longchamp. This gave him the occasion to launch his last maniera: a total abstraction that would lead him, in 1931, to join the Abstraction-Création group, whose theoretical creed regarding universal harmony he would espouse enthusiastically.

His last work consisted of three panels to decorate the cinema in the Railroad Pavilion (on which Metzinger was also working) of the legendary Paris International Exposition of Arts and Techniques of 1937, which, under the title of Rythmes Mécaniques (Mechanical rhythms), Valmier was painting when he died on March 25, two months before the Exposition opened its doors. It was his contribution to a collective undertaking that represents one of the greatest emblems of modernity, where, however, although perhaps few people perceived it at the time,so many modern ideals were destined to come to an end.

Valmier’s works are found at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum of New York, the Musée National d’Art Moderne de Paris and the Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller in Otterlo. M-T. M. B.