#bold color

Collection: Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, MO, United States

Collection: Pola Museum of Art, Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan

At the heart of a narrow, wooded valley the almost naked figure of Jason brandishes the ram’s head in his right hand. The bloody corpse of the dragon, from whom he seized his trophy, lies at the bottom of the altar on which the Golden Fleece was originally placed. The hero, whose adonis-like physique draws upon Donatello’s David, carries on his left arm a haloed putto representing Eros, the god of love, thanks to whom Jason managed to acquire the Fleece. As is usual in Moreau’s later works, the texture of the glistening paint surface is thick and highly wrought. Two small harpies, symbolising lurking death, flutter on the right-hand side.

They called him a Fauvist before Fauvism had a name. Then they forgot him entirely. Louis Valtat showed alongside Matisse and Derain at the infamous 1905 Salon d'Automne - the one where critic Louis Vauxcelles looked at the room and spat out the word "fauves." Wild beasts. But here's the cruel irony: Valtat had been painting with those same untamed colors for nearly a decade before that scandal broke. He was already there - already dragging thick, impasto strokes of vermilion and cadmium across canvas while the art world was still arguing about whether Monet went too far. And when Fauvism became a movement, a moment, a chapter heading in art history books, Valtat somehow slipped between the pages. His "Flowers in a Vase" still carries that early wildness. Ice-blue background pressing cool against hot poppies. An olive-gold vase holding everything together like a cupped hand. That enormous pale yellow bloom on the left glows like a paper lantern, and beneath it, a patterned cloth in reds and oranges hums like a second bouquet. By the late 1930s, cataracts were stealing his sight - and he kept painting anyway, pushing pigment with the confidence of a man who knew what color felt like even when he could barely see it. The petals don't care. They burn anyway. Quelle: meisterdrucke.com

Charles Camoin (French, 1879 - 1965) • Nature Morte • Unknown date • Private collection

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