Raoul Duffy

Raoul Duffy

Style: Fauvism

Raoul Dufy was born on June 3rd 1877 at Le Havre a region of France. Raoul grew up in a large family of nine children and left school to start work at age 14 in a coffee importing company. In 1895 Raoul started evening classes in art at Le Havre École des Beaux-Arts. He and Othon Friesz, a school friend, studied the works of Eugène Boudin in the museum in Le Havre. Fauvism is French for nothing less than ‘The Wild Beasts’. This not so flattering term was given to the artists of this movement because of their supposed lack of discipline.ne 3, 1877 - March 23, 1953 (19th - 20th century)

"My eyes were made to erase all that is ugly"

In 1900, after a year of military service, he won a scholarship enabling him to attend the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a fellow student of Georges Braque. The impressionist landscapists, such as Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro, influenced him. Introduced to Berthe Weill in 1902, she showed his work in her gallery. Henri Matisse's Luxe, Calme et Volupté, which Dufy saw at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, was a revelation to the young artist and directed his interest towards Fauvism. Les Fauves (wild beasts) emphasised bright colour and rich bold contours in their work, and Dufy’s painting reflects this approach until about 1909, when contact with the work of Paul Cézanne led him to adopt a somewhat subtler technique. It was not until 1920, after he had flirted briefly with yet another style, c ubism, that Dufy developed his own distinctive approach involving skeletal structures, arranged in a diminished perspective, and the use of light washes of colour put on by swift brush strokes in a manner that came to be known as stenographic.
Dufy also acquired a reputation as an illustrator and an applied artist. He ch anged the face of fashion and fabric design with his work for Paul Poiret. He painted murals for public buildings, and produced a prodigious number of tapestries and ceramic designs. His plates appear in books by Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and André Gide. Raoul who is most famous for his use of cheerful oils and watercolors depict yachting scenes, sparkling views of the French Riviera, chic parties and musical events.

The optimistic and fashionab ly decorative and illustrative nature of much of his work has meant that his output is less highly critically valued than artists who treat a wider range of soci al concerns.

Dufy is also an illustrator and a commercial artist. He changed the face of local fashion and fabric design with his work for Paul Poiret. He painted murals for public buildings; he also produced a huge number of tapestries and ceramic designs. His plates appear in books by Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, and André Gide. Dufy died at Forcalquier, France, on 23 March 1953, and he was buried near Matisse in the Cimiez Monastery Cemetery in Cimiez, a suburb of the city of Nice.