Kees van Dongen, Johnny Hudgins, chanteur négre / Nightclub: the Singer Johnny Hudgins, c. 1927, Oil on canvas, 134 x 120 cm, Private collection, Great Britain.

Kees van Dongen, Modjesko, Soprano Singer, 1907, Oil on canvas / masonite, 100 x 81.3 cm, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Gift of Mr and Mrs Peter A. Rübel. 192.1955, © 2010. Digital Image, The Museum of Modern Art/Scala, Florence, Photograph SCALA, Florence.

Kees van Dongen, Autoportrait en Neptune / Self-portrait as Neptune, 1922, Oil on canvas 170 x 120 cm, gift of the Friends of Living Artists, 1929, Musée national d'art moderne / Centre Georges Pompidou.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
Museumpark 18-20
+ 31 (0)10 44.19.400
Rotterdam
All Eyes on Kees van Dongen
September 18, 2010-January 23, 2011

This major exhibition of paintings by internationally renowned artist Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) comes from private and public collections, from as far afield as New York, Paris, Istanbul and St Petersburg.

Rotterdam-born van Dongen was followed by the world’s press from "Paris to Tokyo." He cut a flamboyant figure in Paris. His lifestyle was controversial; his lavish nightly studio parties attended by film stars, politicians and artists. "Woman" his muse, her body his landscape, and a young Brigitte Bardot was his most famous model. What Andy Warhol was to New York in the 1960s, van Dongen was to Paris — a society artist and Bohemian who brought added color and excitement to the city from the Roaring Twenties on. Van Dongen received various French awards, shared a studio with Picasso and took French nationality in 1929. In the Netherlands of his time, Van Dongen was seen as a Dutch artist enjoying success abroad. Today his colorful paintings sell for record prices.

All Eyes on Kees van Dongen shows representative examples of Van Dongen’s portraiture and extravagant works created in his Paris studios. Paintings he made on his trips to Egypt, Spain and Morocco (1910-13) are an important feature of the exhibition. These alluring portraits of women, with oriental influences, intense colours and sumptuous decorative accents, are among his best works. The exhibition ends with acrobats, provocative women, nightlife scenes and paintings dating from early years in Paris and Rotterdam. Included is a selection of drawings, ceramics, posters, and photographs.

For two years, guest curator Anita Hopmans has carried out in-depth art-historical research into van Dongen. She has discovered new facts about his years in Paris, which she is incorporating into the current exhibition. She looked for works with which Van Dongen attracted attention at art fairs and played a role in the artists’ circles. It is an exhibition of works that mark Van Dongen’s road to success. Kees van Dongen — His Path to Fame in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is a unique opportunity to see Van Dongen at his best.

A lavishly illustrated catalogue with essays by Anita Hopmans was published before the exhibition. In English and Dutch, it is on sale internationally. There are workshops and lectures while the exhibition is running.

Kees van Dongen, La Penseuse / The Thinker, 1907, Oil on canvas, 65 x 54.5 cm, Musée & Jardins Van Buuren, Photograph: Musée & Jardins Van Buuren.

Kees van Dongen, Femme Arabe / Arab Woman, c. 1915, Oil on canvas, 65.7 x 46.3 cm, Barbour Trade Corp. Courtesy of John Pillar.

Kees van Dongen, La Commode / The Commode, 1912, Oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Collection. Pictoright, Amsterdam.

Kees van Dongen, Lieuses / Sheaf Binders, 1905 Oil on canvas, 37.5 x 45 cm Private collection.

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Woman on Sofa, c. 1930, Oil on canvas, 89.2 x 116.8 cm, The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Gift of Dr. Max Stern, Photo MBAM / Jean-François Briére, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Woman with Black Stockings, c. 1912, Oil on canvas, 128 x 195 cm, Collection: Bruce and Robbi Toll, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Woman Drinking Absinthe, c. 1902, Brush with black ink, grey wash, over sketch in black chalk, watercolour, gouache, 41 x 60.5 cm, Private collection, Photo Vincent Everarts, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Fernande Olivier, 1907, Oil on cardboard, 39 x 35 cm, Musée Fabre, Montpellier, Photo Frédéric Jaulmes, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Mother and Child, 1906, Oil on canvas, 55.5 x 46.5 cm, Private Collection, courtesy Galerie de la Présidence, Paris, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), The Dancers Revel and Coco, c. 1909-1910, Oil on canvas, 91.5 x 73 cm, Private collection, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
1380 Sherbrooke West
514-285-2000
Montreal
Kees van Dongen. A Fauve in the City
January 22-April 19, 2009

The first major retrospective of the art of Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) brings together 200 works, including over 100 paintings, and 40 rare drawings, prints, archival documents and photographs, and, for the first time, a dozen Fauvist ceramics. From turn-of-the-century anarchist to "interwar painter of elegant neurosis," it is the work of a moralist shown here, a social observer, from the bohemian to demimondaines of the cocktail era.

The exhibitionillustrates the influential role Van Dongen played in early 20th-century art and his unique position as the only portraitist among the Fauves. The exhibition re-establish the place of a forgotten Fauve in North America. His caustic, urban, scandalous art is very different from the landscape Fauvism that is generally associated with this movement. His dazzling, shameless works, which have been described as "riots of light, heat and colour," attest to his distinctive style within modern art alongside his contemporaries Matisse and Picasso.

In the light of new research and previously little-known works, the artist's career is traced from his early days in Holland to his move to Paris and his participation in the famous Salon d'Automne of 1905, which established Fauvism as a new movement in modern art. Arresting paintings of nudes and flirtatious women that retain the sumptuous colours and rich impasto of his Fauvist works are examined through the themes of exoticism, spectacle and Orientalism. The show also includes an impressive selection of large society portraits of the most celebrated personalities of the Roaring Twenties, which illustrates his mature period. After Monaco and Montreal, the exhibition travels to Barcelona's Picasso Museum.

The Montreal presentation includes, for the first time in North America, the outstanding collection of works by Van Dongen recently acquired by the Nouveau Musée national de Monaco, including the magisterial Spotted Chimera (1895-1907) and the Tabarin Wrestlers (1907-1908), an astonishing canvas that has not been exhibited for over 50 years, and Tango of the Archangel (1922-1935). The Musée national d'art modern, the Centre Pompidou and the Musée d'art modern de la Ville de Paris have granted many outstanding loans for the exhibition, including the famous Tableau that created a scandal in 1913 and the Self-portrait as Neptune (1922). Many major loans have also been received from public and private collections in Europe and elsewhere, including a number of important works from the Nahmad family. The Montreal exhibition is also presenting works from American collections.

The themes of the exhibition introduce visitors to Van Dongen's rich and varied oeuvre as they follow his career from Rotterdam to Paris, where he was an active player in the avant-garde scene of the early 20th century. From North to South, from Symbolism to Neo-impressionism (1885-1904) presents early works executed in Holland, which reflect Van Dongen's inspiration, which ranged from Rembrandt to the Neo-Impressionists; Van Dongen Illustrator (1895-1904) reveals the key role his graphic work played in his art, which was defended by Van Dongen's first, most influential supporter, art critic Félix Fénéon; Van Dongen Fauve (1904-1912) shows his style evolving under the influence of artists of the avant-garde like Matisse and Picasso, as well as how he became notorious after his participation in the Salon d'Automne in 1905, and his growing interest in portraiture, the worlds of the cabaret and the circus and his obsession with women; Exoticism and Orientalism (1910-1917) reveals how his trips to Spain, Morocco and Egypt inspired him to create new harmonies of colours and to explore a new purity of line; The Artist's Studio: A Social Venue (1914-1930). During this period the now famous Van Dongen frequented Paris high society and painted a gallery of portraits that represent a chronicle of the Roaring Twenties; and Landscapes (the 1950s) the final section, presents works, as well as archival documents and photographs, that show the artist revisiting the themes and styles that characterized his early years.

Cornelius Theodorus Marie (Kees) van Dongen was born January 26, 1877 in a suburb of Rotterdam. After studying at the city's Academy of Arts and Sciences he spent some time in Paris in 1897, where he took various odd jobs to earn a living. He returned briefly to Holland, and settled in Paris in 1899. His drawings of society's outcasts were published to acclaim in a number of satirical newspapers including L'Assiette au beurre and La Revue Blanche. In 1904, he met Picasso, Derain and Vlaminck, and the same year had his first solo exhibition at Galerie Ambroise Vollard, one of the leading galleries of the day. In 1905, he exhibited at the Salon d'Automne alongside Matisse, Derain and Vlaminck. It was here that the journalist Louis Vauxcelles coined the phrase "cage aux fauves", a cage of wild beasts, to describe the show. Fauvism was thereafter established as a new style in modern art. In 1906 Van Dongen moved to the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre where his friend Picasso lived. Picasso's mistress Fernande Olivier became his first model. In 1908 he was given a solo exhibition by Kahnweiler, one of the leading art dealers, not only in Paris but also in Düsseldorf and Moscow, which earned him an international reputation. He revisited Spain and Morocco in 1910 and 1911. In 1913 the Marquise Luisa Casati introduced him into high society, and he soon became its chief chronicler, the most sought after portrait painter in Paris. In 1919 Van Dongen took French citizenship. Following the slump of 1929, which marked the end of the Roaring Twenties, he had fewer commissions for portraits, but he was in demand again by 1936. When Paris was occupied in 1940 he accepted a trip to Nazi Germany organized by Arno Becker, with artists like Derain, Vlaminck and Dunoyer de Ségonzac. They were all strongly censured thereafter, and Van Dongen moved to Monaco in 1949. Numerous exhibitions and retrospectives were devoted to his work in other countries. In 1959 he took part in the major exhibition Le fauvisme français et les débuts de l'impressionisme. Van Dongen died in Monaco on May 28,1968.

Curators are Nathalie Bondil, Director and Chief Curator of Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and Jean-Michel Bouhours, curator at Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou, are the exhibition curators. Anne Grace, Curator of Modern Art at MMFA, is associate curator. Curatorial Committee includes Christian Briend, chief curator of prints and drawings, Musée national d'art moderne, Centre Pompidou; Anita Hopmans, chief curator of modern and contemporary art, Netherlands Institute for Art History in the Hague; and Daniel Marchesseau, chief curator for heritage, Direction des musées de France, and director of the Musée de la vie romantique de la Ville de Paris.

The catalogue is more than a catalogue. This richly illustrated book is co-published by Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Nouveau Musée National de Monaco and Hazan, Paris, in separate French and English editions. It includes many previously unpublished documents thanks to the co-operation of the artist's family. The first major work published in English on Van Dongen, it includes essays by a team of internationally renowned experts, including, for the first time, American art historians.

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), The Wrestlers or Tabarin Wrestlers, 1907-1908, Oil on cardboard, 105.5 x 164 cm, Noubeau Musée National de Monaco, Photo Marcel Loli, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).

Kees van Dongen (1877-1968), Tango or Tango of the Archangel, 1922-1935, Oil on canvas, 196 x 197 cm, Collection: Nouveau Musée National de Monaco, © Estate of Kees van Dongen / SODRAC (2008).