Colecciones de arte

Paysage, 1920

FICHA TÉCNICA
Paysage, 1920
Óleo sobre lienzo, 60,5 x 81,5 cm

At the time Paysage (Landscape) was painted, Valmier was at the peak of his artistic career (1917-1921): emerging from the cubist current, he had reached his greatest degree of abstraction to date. Although the painter was already a member of the group of artists associated with the L’Effort Moderne gallery, he had not followed Léonce Rosenberg’s suggestion to stop at the threshold of non-representational painting without crossing over into the realm of abstraction, in order not to upset that delicate balance between construction and representation that most of the cubists so fervently sought to achieve.It would not be until a year later, in 1921, that he would begin to backtrack toward a figuration that would nevertheless retain a certain restraint before any naturalistic temptation. All this took place, however, within the borders of synthetic cubism, whose framework during the period between the wars was complex enough to offer a space for proposals of a different complexion.

When the war ended, Valmier had joined the group of painters (Léger, Gris, Severini, Gleizes, Metzinger, etc.), writers (Jean Cocteau, Pierre Reverdy, Max Jacob) and musicians whom Léonce Rosenberg brought together around his gallery, L’Effort Moderne. From 1919 onwards all of his worked passed through that gallery, the firmest bastion of post-war cubism and a stage for encounters and mutual creative emulation among the mentioned artists. Among the ideas that circulated in this environment were the theories on non-objective painting developed by Mondrian, whose texts were published in 1920 by the gallery owner in collaboration withMaurice Raynal. Mondrian’s ideas may have been one of the greatest stimuli that Valmier received to step firmly away from pictorial description. From 1918 to 1921 his painting was increasingly oriented toward that goal, and while references to the real did not entirely disappear—we should bear in mind that his compositions from this period bear titles such asVoiliers (Sailboats) or Le sémaphore (The Semaphore), the real is suggested very tenuously.If in 1917 he was still practicing a kind of hermetic cubism, consisting of compositions governed by apyramidal framework with some pointillist facets, the facets gradually tended to close, the colors became more vivid and flatter, finally arriving at the language we can see in Paysage.

Paysage, dated in 1920, must be included in this context in which Valmier was showing his interest in schematizing the subject until he attained a “synthesis” of his idea, avoiding any hint of the anecdote or detail. He did not want to represent nature as it is, but rather to suggest it, to convey what is constant about it: “To suggest is not to concede the illusion of what we see, but to evoke reality, the synthesis of reality with the means that come from the spirit,” as he wrote in 1925, or “The suggested moves the viewer in a different way than a direct manifestation does.” Just as Braque and Picasso did in their hermetic canvases, Valmier clearly understood the poetic value of suggestion in the revolutionary approaches to representation that the new painting was pursuing. And his painting could thus respond to the statement by Mallarmé—who was highly esteemed among the writers belonging to the cubist circle—according to which “To name an object is to destroy three fourths of the pleasure that the poem offers us, a pleasure that derives from the enjoyment of guessing by degrees, from suggesting it.” The suggestion of a pleasant, colorful landscape is what this canvas shows us: houses, in some of which the drawing has been dissociated from the color—in an operation that is typical of synthetic cubism; schematized trees, stairways, undulating lines suggesting hills and offering a counterpoint to the powerful presence of the straight line, a piece of sky, perhaps of sea; flat forms that can evoke more than one meaning. And, above all, the use of color that is itself a form of joie de vivre, of a wise ingenuousness: “Everything that is energy and life has a direct influence on my work.”

Following his custom at that time, Valmier must have made one of those preparatory studies for this painting, using the gouache and papier collé techniques that enabled him to explore compositional possibilities. This could seemingly be deduced from this type of composition based on a deft, delicate combination of mostly geometric planes, supported by areas of solid, uniform, opaque color juxtaposed at some points of the pictorial surface, on which the painter superimposed fragments of lines that offer keys and decorative accents. The artist chose to frame the composition in an oval that has the effect of concentrating it. All this indicates that Valmier’s approach is synthetic: he does not start from the observation of reality as a base, for his starting point consists of flat colored forms. He thus uses tools that were usual in the cubism practiced during the period between the wars, the translation of papiers collés to oil, that constitute a development of the heritage of synthetic cubism practiced by Braque and Picasso starting in 1912.

From the first moment of our encounter with it, Paysage captures our attention because of one of the greatest achievements in Valmier’s painting: the subtle, elegant and joyful sense of color, color that evokes life and does not disdain the decorative. This is why it is part of that current of color-based painting that is so characteristic of one of the branches of cubism of this period. “With today’s plastic arts expressions,” Valmier wrote, “color takes on its real meaning, its own life.... Color is matter destined to express the spirit.”

Most of the authors who have written about Valmier’s painting assiduously use words to describe it such as delicacy, elegance, refinement, subtlety or tact—the word tact is one of their favorites. And almost all of them agree in pointing out a trait that Paysage surely exemplifies: its constant search for a perfect balance between the sensual and the cerebral, sensitivity and intelligence, reality and abstraction, exaltation of color and compositional rigor, as his dealer Léonce Rosenberg expressed it. Paysage is thus one of the exquisite fruits of a painter who possessed “a subtle grace and an implacable precision: like a Watteau who had passed through Eiffel’s studio.”

From the moment this canvas was executed, Valmier’s work turned, in response to Léonce Rosenberg’s suggestion, toward a greater legibility. It would always maintain its decorative spirit, which would also have an opportunity to be expressed in that other, more practical field of artistic endeavor in which Valmier was active: the design of theatrical costumes and sets, wallpaper, textiles, etc. It is in this application of art to life that we recognize Valmier as an enthusiast of modernity, an enthusiast captured in those Mechanical Rhythms that he was painting for the 1937 Exposition when death overtook him. (M-T. M.B.)

The signature is the painter’s own, appearing in the lower part of the canvas to the left of the center line: G. VALMIER.

ORIGIN

Léonce Rosenberg L'Effort Moderne / Galerie Saint Augustin de París / Florent Schmitt / Galería Leandro Navarro

EXHIBITIONS

Georges Valmier, Peintures de 1909 à 1937 , París, Galerie Saint-Agustin, 1956 / El cubismo como nueva espirituralidad: Albert Gleizes, Georges Valmier , Madrid, Galería Leandro Navarro, 2003.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RUBIO NOMBLOT, JAVIER, El cubismo como nueva espirituralidad: Albert Gleizes, Georges Valmier, Madrid, Galería Leandro Navarro, 2003, p. 73 / Data sheet on the lot including Paysage (1920) in the catalog of Sotheby’s, London, 2002 / To be included in the supplement to the catalogue raisonné of Georges Valmier’s works by Denise Bazetoux.

(1) BERTHON-MARCEILLAC, LAURENCE, «Georges Valmier», L'OEil , nº 287, April, 1980.

(2) MALLARME quoted by Jules Huret in “Enquête sur l’évolution littéraire” for L’Echo de Paris, 14 March 1891.

(3) Valmier, Georges, “Réponse à l’enquête sur l’avenir de la couleur dans la peinture moderne,” Bulletin de l’Effort moderne, Nº 22, February 1926.

(4) Solana, Guillermo, “Música de cámara,” in Georges Valmier, exhibition catalog, Madrid, Galería Leandro Navarro, 2000, no page number.