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Lot Essay
To be included in the forthcoming Kees Van Dongen catalogue critique of paintings and drawings being prepared by Jacques Chalom Des Cordes under the sponsorship of the Wildenstein Institute.
Tête de femme appears to date from the highpoint of Fauvism, the informal movement with which Kees van Dongen was linked. This was an aesthetic that used pure, bold colours in order to convey an energised and expressionistic vision of the world. Those qualities are clearly present in Tête de femme, where Van Dongen has painted much of the canvas with a gleaming white that gives a sense of the woman's body and face; the shadows are conveyed through greys, greens and reds which are thrust into bolder relief by the body and the dark background.
Looking at this palette, the difference between Van Dongen and his fellow Fauves is immediately apparent: while his contemporaries often focussed on the landscapes of, say, Chatou, Van Dongen was more often depicting the urban world which he had already chronicled in illustrations over the previous years. He immersed himself in the demimonde of artists, actresses, dancers and drinkers, recording them with a searing new vitality. In Tête de femme, it appears that it is not the sunlight of, say, Maurice de Vlaminck's landscapes, but instead the electric or stage lights of the nightclubs of Paris that is evoked. Indeed, the woman in this painting appears to show some form of performer, an idea reinforced by the compositional similarities between this picture and La danseuse rouge of 1907, now in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg: in that work, a woman is shown in three quarters, revealing the outfit that is worn underneath the bare shoulders, but the face and the exposed skin are depicted using highly similar means.
It is a tribute to the importance of Tête de femme that it was owned by Dr. Vance E. Kondon. Born in Connecticut, Kondon was a successful doctor who managed to accumulate a collection that spanned much of the Twentieth Century, often featuring some of its most innovative pioneers, including such artists as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden and Egon Schiele; many of these works were bequeathed to the San Diego Museum of Art, of which he was a board member, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
Tête de femme appears to date from the highpoint of Fauvism, the informal movement with which Kees van Dongen was linked. This was an aesthetic that used pure, bold colours in order to convey an energised and expressionistic vision of the world. Those qualities are clearly present in Tête de femme, where Van Dongen has painted much of the canvas with a gleaming white that gives a sense of the woman's body and face; the shadows are conveyed through greys, greens and reds which are thrust into bolder relief by the body and the dark background.
Looking at this palette, the difference between Van Dongen and his fellow Fauves is immediately apparent: while his contemporaries often focussed on the landscapes of, say, Chatou, Van Dongen was more often depicting the urban world which he had already chronicled in illustrations over the previous years. He immersed himself in the demimonde of artists, actresses, dancers and drinkers, recording them with a searing new vitality. In Tête de femme, it appears that it is not the sunlight of, say, Maurice de Vlaminck's landscapes, but instead the electric or stage lights of the nightclubs of Paris that is evoked. Indeed, the woman in this painting appears to show some form of performer, an idea reinforced by the compositional similarities between this picture and La danseuse rouge of 1907, now in the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg: in that work, a woman is shown in three quarters, revealing the outfit that is worn underneath the bare shoulders, but the face and the exposed skin are depicted using highly similar means.
It is a tribute to the importance of Tête de femme that it was owned by Dr. Vance E. Kondon. Born in Connecticut, Kondon was a successful doctor who managed to accumulate a collection that spanned much of the Twentieth Century, often featuring some of its most innovative pioneers, including such artists as Max Beckmann, George Grosz, Franz Kline, Roy Lichtenstein, Piero Manzoni, Brice Marden and Egon Schiele; many of these works were bequeathed to the San Diego Museum of Art, of which he was a board member, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.