School of Paris
From 1900 until about 1940 (the advent of the second World War), Paris was a thriving centre of artistic activity that provided unparalleled conditions for the exchange of creative ideas.
A wave of artists of all nationalities gravitated to the French capital which fostered an inspiring climate of imagination and innovation. Because of the enormous influx of non-French artists living and working in Paris, a loosely defined affiliation developed referred to as the School of Paris (Ecole de Paris).
The School of Paris activities were initially concentrated in Montmartre, but subsequently moved to Montparnasse in the early 1910s. Focusing on conventional subjects such as portraiture, figure studies, landscapes, cityscapes, and still lifes, artists demonstrated a diversity of styles and techniques including the bold, dynamic colours of Fauvism, the revolutionary methods of Cubism, the animated qualities of Expressionism, and the private worlds of Symbolism.
The unprecedented migration to Paris of foreign artists who worked closely with leading French artists such as Henri Matisse, André Derain, Pierre Bonnard and Jean Dubuffet came to an end with the outbreak of World War II. Many artists fled to New York or returned to their homeland, and the frenzied activity experienced by members of the School of Paris concluded.
Artists associated with the School of Paris
Robert Delaunay, Tour Eiffel, 1926
Robert Delauney
Robert Delaunay was a French artist who was apprenticed for two years to a theatrical designer before beginning to paint. He was influenced by Post Impressionism and later by Cézanne. He exhibited in the Cubist room at the Salon des Indépendants in 1911 with Metzinger, Gleizes, Léger and Le Fauconnier. In 1912 he began to use pure colours and painted his first abstract pictures.
Together with his wife Sonia Delaunay and others he founded the Orphism art movement, noted for its use of strong colours and geometric shapes.
His later works were more abstract, reminiscent of Paul Klee. His key influence related to bold use of colour, and a clear love of experimentation with both depth and tone.
1885 - 1941
Jean Dubuffet, Fear, 1924
Jean Dubuffet
Jean Dubuffet had a vast knowledge of classical art and culture, but he sought a new path for his art based outside Western artistic conventions.
He became a proponent of art brut (raw art), anti-aesthetic art inspired by the art of children, the mentally ill, prisoners, and those “unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays little or no part".
In his quest for a dynamic, expressive, and authentic style, Dubuffet developed a technique of scratching into thickly impastoed paint surfaces, often mixed with materials from the earth, to produce raw, graffiti-like images.
1901 - 19985
Pablo Picasso Standing Female Nude 1910
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso, who moved to France in 1904, was a leading figure in the School of Paris.
His variety of artistic styles is representative of the kind of cross-fertilization that occurred within the School of Paris.
His groundbreaking collaboration with the Frenchman Georges Braque fostered the development of Cubism. Subsequently he was associated with the Surrealist artists working in Paris in the early 1920s (although never an official member of the movement), such as Spaniard Joan Miró and Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico who also resided in Paris for some years.
1881 - 1973
Henri Matisse, Joy of Life 1905 - 06
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse, a French artist, was also considered to be one of the leading artists of the time. He was known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was also a printmaker and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
Although he was initially labelled a Fauve, by the 1920s he was increasingly regarded as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.
His work was grounded in tradition - with a much less restless and ironic approach than Picasso.
1869 - 1954
Paul Bonnard, Woman in Front of a Mirror, c 1908
Pierre Bonnard
1867 - 1947
The French artist, Pierre Bonnard, was a successful painter, draughtsman, photographer, printmaker, illustrator and interior designer. In his twenties he was a part of Les Nabis, a group of young artists committed to creating work of symbolic and spiritual nature.
Bonnard is known for his intense use of colour, especially in areas built up with small brush marks and close values. His often complex compositions - typically of sunlit interiors of rooms and gardens populated with friends and family members - are both narrative and autobiographical.
His wife Marthe was an ever-present subject over the course of several decades. She is seen seated at the kitchen table, with the remnants of a meal; or nude, as in a series of paintings where she reclines in the bathtub. He also painted several self-portraits, landscapes, and many still lifes such as flowers and fruit.
Émilie Charmy, Self Portrail, 1909
Émilie Charmy
Émilie Charmy was a highly original exponent of modern art in Paris during the first half of the 20th century.
She developed her artistic style by engaging with Impressionism, Post Impressionism, and Fauvism in the years leading to World War I.
Charmy became well known for her strikingly expressive and sensuous depictions of the female form.
1878 - 1974
Constantin Brancusi, Mlle Pogany, 1913
Constantin Brancusi
Romanian born Constantin Brancusi was a sculptor, draughtsman, painter and photographer of Romanian birth. He was one of the most influential 20th-century sculptors, but he left a relatively small body of work centred on 215 sculptures, of which about 50 are thought to have been lost or destroyed.
Soon after 1907, Brancusi had settled in Paris but returned frequently to Bucharest and exhibited there almost every year. In Paris, his friends included Marcel Duchamp, Fernand Léger, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, and Henri Rousseau.
His sculpture is noted for its visual elegance and sensitive use of materials.
1876 – 1957
Andre Derain, Harlequin and Pierrot, c 1924
Andre' Derain
André Derain was one of the most original of the Fauve painters, working first with Maurice de Vlaminck at Chatou and then at Collioure with Matisse.
In 1907 he moved to Montmartre, near the tenement building known as the Bateau-Lavoir, and became friends with Picasso and Georges Braque. Together they shared an interest in Cézanne and African sculpture.
His success was such that by 1910 his dealer, Kahnweiler, was buying – and selling – his entire production. After this time he withdrew from the avant-garde and developed his own manner of working, focusing on still life and figurative subjects, heavily influenced by the classical art of the past.
1880 - 1954
Fernand Legér, Three Woman, 1921-22
Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger was a French painter, draughtsman, illustrator, printmaker, stage designer, film maker and ceramicist who was amongst the most prominent artists in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.
He was prolific in many media and maintained a consistent position on the role of art in society in his many lectures and writings.
His mature work underwent many changes, from Cubist derived abstraction in the 1910s to more distinctive realist imagery in the 1950s
1881 - 1955
Fernand Legér, Three Woman, 1921-22
Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger was a French painter, draughtsman, illustrator, printmaker, stage designer, film maker and ceramicist who was amongst the most prominent artists in Paris in the first half of the 20th century.
He was prolific in many media and maintained a consistent position on the role of art in society in his many lectures and writings.
His mature work underwent many changes, from Cubist derived abstraction in the 1910s to more distinctive realist imagery in the 1950s
1881 - 1955
Romaine Brooks, Self Portrait, 1923
Romaine Brooks
Romaine Brooks was an American painter who worked mostly in Paris and Capri. She specialised in portraiture and used a subdued palette dominated by the colour grey.
Brooks ignored contemporary artistic trends such as Cubism and Fauvism, drawing instead on the Symbolist and Aesthetic movements of the 19th century, especially the works of James McNeill Whistler.
Her subjects ranged from anonymous models to titled aristocrats. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self-portrait of 1923, which is her most widely reproduced work.
1874 - 1970
Hans Arp Untitled (Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance) 1916-17
Hans Arp
Hans Arp was a founding member of the Dada movement in Zurich 1916 and then in 1920 in Cologne. However, in 1925 his work also appeared in the first exhibition of the Surrealist group at the Gallerie Pierre in Paris. In 1931 he broke from the Surrealist group.
In Zurich during World War I he created collages, such as Collage with Squares Arranged according to the Laws of Chance, 1916-17, that promote chance over artistic intention. This work consists of fragments of coloured paper arranged in a random configuration. The shapes in this collage were torn from sheets of coloured paper. By using his hands to rip the paper instead of a more precise tool, he gave up a degree of control and embraced the jagged contours.
1887 - 1966
Marc Chagall, I and the Village, 1911
Marc Chagall
A prominent figure in the School of Paris, the Russian artist Marc Chagall initially lived in Paris from 1910 to 1914. Moving into a studio in Montparnasse adjacent to Modigliani and near the Frenchman Fernand Léger and Soutine, Chagall's use of unrealistic perspective, sharply defined contours, and figures in various scale show the influence of the French artist Robert Delaunay.
He became a leading artist of the School of Paris during the 1920s and '30s after his exile from the Soviet Union in 1923.
The often whimsical figurative elements, frequently upside down, are distributed on the canvas in an arbitrary fashion, producing an effect that sometimes resembles a film montage and suggests the inner space of a reverie. The general atmosphere of these works can imply a Yiddish joke, a Russian fairy tale, or a vaudeville turn. Often the principal character is the romantically handsome, curly-haired young painter himself. Memories of childhood and of Vitebsk were major sources of imagery for Chagall during this period.
1887 - 1985
Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne, 1918
Amedeo Modigliani
An Italian artist of Jewish descent, Amedeo Modigliani moved from Italy to Paris in 1906, settling in Montmartre. A prolific painter, he developed a personal style of painting portraits and nudes with strong linear outlines and elongated features.
Modigliani was mentored by the Romanian born sculptor, Constantin Brancusi. Like Brancusi, Modigiliani also carved directly into stone and looked mainly to African sculpture for inspiration. Unfortunately the stone dust aggravated his is poor health, which included tuberculosis, so he was forced to abandon sculpture in 1914.
Bringing with him the bold lines and geometric abstraction that he had mastered in his sculptures, Modigliani returned to painting portraits, rendering his subjects—which featured the people from his neighbourhood, the women who passed through his life and his many friends among the Parisian artistic community—with lines that were bold but simple and masklike faces that were simultaneously flat and evocative, including more than 20 works of Jeanne Hébuterne. His portraits of her represent his late style, with her increasingly exaggerated and elongated neck.
1884 - 1920
Tsuguharu Foujita, Café, 1949.
Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita was one of the oldest members of the School of Paris. He was friends with Braque, Picasso and Rousseau, all of whom subtly influenced his style.
He bridged the gap between Eastern and Western art in his narrative works, executed in a clear flowing line with paint applied in thin, very smooth layers of soft colours tending to greys, mauves, pale ochres and blacks. Even in the liveliest of his paintings (usually women and cats) his mood and effects are dreamily quiet, almost timeless in their clarity.
He received formal training at the Imperial School of Fine Arts. Success came quickly and Foujita was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Emperor of Korea and subsequently the Emperor of Japan purchased one of his paintings.
He was the only Japanese artist of his time to earn a considerable reputation in Europe.
1886 - 1968
Tsuguharu Foujita, Café, 1949.
Tsuguharu Foujita
Tsuguharu Foujita was one of the oldest members of the School of Paris. He was friends with Braque, Picasso and Rousseau, all of whom subtly influenced his style.
He bridged the gap between Eastern and Western art in his narrative works, executed in a clear flowing line with paint applied in thin, very smooth layers of soft colours tending to greys, mauves, pale ochres and blacks. Even in the liveliest of his paintings (usually women and cats) his mood and effects are dreamily quiet, almost timeless in their clarity.
He received formal training at the Imperial School of Fine Arts. Success came quickly and Foujita was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Emperor of Korea and subsequently the Emperor of Japan purchased one of his paintings.
He was the only Japanese artist of his time to earn a considerable reputation in Europe.
1886 - 1968
Chaime Soutine, The Table, 1919
Chaime Soutine
Tsuguharu Foujita was one of the oldest members of the School of Paris. He was friends with Braque, Picasso and Rousseau, all of whom subtly influenced his style.
He bridged the gap between Eastern and Western art in his narrative works, executed in a clear flowing line with paint applied in thin, very smooth layers of soft colours tending to greys, mauves, pale ochres and blacks. Even in the liveliest of his paintings (usually women and cats) his mood and effects are dreamily quiet, almost timeless in their clarity.
He received formal training at the Imperial School of Fine Arts. Success came quickly and Foujita was commissioned to paint a portrait of the Emperor of Korea and subsequently the Emperor of Japan purchased one of his paintings.
He was the only Japanese artist of his time to earn a considerable reputation in Europe.
1893- 1943
Suggested Videos and Reading
Identify two artists included in the School of Paris who have quite different styles.
Draw or paint works which are in the style of each artist. In doing so, try to gain a greater understanding of what that particular artist was trying to achieve and why you would consider it to be modern art for the time.
