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André LHOTE (Bordeaux 1885-Paris 1962)
Hamlet against the li…
See original version (French)
92
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André LHOTE (Bordeaux 1885-Paris 1962)
Hamlet against the li…
See original version (French)
Estimate €10,000 - €15,000
Voluntary lot
Description
André LHOTE (Bordeaux 1885-Paris 1962)
Hamlet against the light
Original oil on canvas
38 x 46 cm
Signed lower right A. Lhote
We would like to thank Madame Dominique Bermann Martin for confirming the authenticity of this work.
Provenance :
Private collection
André Lhote (1885-1962) occupies a singular place in the history of twentieth-century French painting: at once an avant-garde artist, an enlightened theoretician and an influential teacher, he was one of the major players in the evolution of Cubism towards a renewed practice of pictorial modernity. Born in Bordeaux on 5 July 1885 into a modest family, he initially trained as a decorative sculptor at the École des Beaux-Arts in his home town before finally choosing painting in 1905, leaving his family's studio to immerse himself in Parisian artistic life.
Arriving in Paris in 1906, Lhote immediately joined the independent salons, where he exhibited landscapes inspired by Fauvism and the work of Paul Gauguin and then Paul Cézanne - whose retrospective at the Salon d'Automne in 1911 had a profound effect on his conception of form. He very quickly moved towards a structured reading of pictorial language: from 1912, he became close to the artists of the Section d'Or group, taking part in their events and adopting a synthetic cubism, rigorous but attached to figuration. The period you illustrate with your drawing from 1908 corresponds to these years of transition, when the classical foundations of space were being re-formed while new possibilities for the geometrisation of volumes were explored.
The First World War interrupted his activities, but from 1917 Lhote consolidated his pictorial language and his reputation. Influenced by tradition, he refused excessive abstraction and always sought to articulate modernity with his classical heritage, creating a dialogue in his compositions between cubist structuring and a legible and expressive architecture of space.
In the post-war period, Lhote was not content to be a creator: he became a thinker and a ferryman. Founding his own Academy in Montparnasse in 1922, he taught generations of artists from all over the world, imparting rigorous construction alongside a keen sense of colour and composition. Every summer, he set up his "summer academy" in Mirmande (Drôme), a village that he revitalised and where he created an environment conducive to the study of light and landscapes. Later, he bought a house in the village of Gordes (Vaucluse), which he discovered in 1938, and became one of the driving forces behind the local renaissance, attracting artists and friends, including Marc Chagall, who stayed there during the war.
The 1930s and 1940s were a decisive stage in the affirmation of his artistic maturity: the Cubist spirit continued to be present, but reinterpreted through a freer palette and structuring of space, as shown by numerous landscape canvases and compositions dating from this period. The works you are presenting from the early 1940s bear witness to this synthesis between formal rigour and chromatic expressivity, from an artist who, while remaining faithful to his conception of a constructed painting, incorporated the modern inflections of a France in the throes of change.
Alongside his pictorial output, Lhote was a well-known writer and art critic: he contributed to La Nouvelle Revue Française from 1917 to 1940, published treatises on landscape and the figure and established himself as one of the most sensitive thinkers on modern painting. Until his death in Paris on 24 January 1962, he led an exceptional career, combining tradition, innovation and teaching, and leaving a body of work and teaching that continue to inspire artists and amateurs alike.
See original version (French)
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Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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