Andre Lhote Bordeaux 1885-1962 Paris 54 A Street in a Country Village Watercolour. Signed and dated: A. LHOTE. 10. 412 x 250 mm. (16 1 /2 x 9 7 /8 in.) Exhibited: Nored Fine Arts. Inc., 55 East 74 th Street, New York, no.7407, as “Route de la Campagne”. At just thirteen years of age, André Lhote embarked upon his artistic career, apprenticed to a local sculpture studio as a woodcarver, before attending the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux, where he studied decorative arts. In 1906, inspired by primitive African sculpture and by the work of Paul Gauguin, Lhote turned to painting. In their rhythmic but vigorous brushstrokes, simplification of shape and intensity of colour, his early works are a complex digestion of Fauvism and of the work of Cézanne, whose retrospective at the Salon d’Automne of 1907 had made a profound effect on the young artist. During this time, Lhote made acquaintance with a number of French writers and critics, such as Henri Fournier, Jacques Rivière, and Joseph Granie - it was Granie who, in 1909, secured a year’s scholarship for Lhote at the Villa Medici Libre, an academic programme for unmarried artists. In this dynamic and forwardthinking artistic environment, Lhote met Raoul Dufy, who in turn proved instrumental in introducing him to the more progressive artists and poets of the day such as Robert Delaunay, <strong>Jean</strong> Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, Fernand Léger and Albert Gleizes. In 1910, Lhote held his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Druet, in Paris. His work was met with critical acclaim and he instantly won the full support of the highly influential critics André Salmon and Guillaime Apollinaire. His position in the Parisian art world was thus established. A year later, Lhote participated in the Salon des Indépendants. His work was exhibited next door to the infamous Salle 41, where the seminal images of Cubism were first unveiled. After learning the extent of their common interests, Lhote and these artists quickly became friends. Their alliance was cemented in the Salon d’Automne of the same year, where paintings by Gleizes, Leger, Metzinger and Duchamps were shown alongside Lhote’s “Port of Bordeaux”. In 1912, Lhote joined the ironically titled “Section d’Or” and his collaboration with such radical protagonists as Kupka and Archipenko saw the concepts of Cubism pushed to new limits of complete abstraction. Given the epithet “the academician of Cubism” by Robert Rosenblum, Lhote became a perpetual exponent of Synthetic or “Soft” Cubism, both in his erudite literary works on the role of painting in modern society, and in his evocative paintings. He regularly expounded his critical and aesthetic beliefs in the journal, “Nouvelle Revue Française” of which he was a co-founder, and he remained an enthusiastic defender of Modernism throughout his life, causing quite a scandal, in 1935, by giving a lecture entitled ’”Is it necessary to burn down the Louvre?”. A considerable painter and outspoken critic, Lhote was also a dedicated teacher. In 1922 he opened the “Académie Montparnasse”, thus providing a vehicle in which to disseminate his style and technique to many young artists, the most notable of whom being the art deco painter, Tamara de Lempicka. In 1955, Lhote’s work was awarded the ”Grand Prix National de Peinture”. He was also given the honour of “President of the International Association of Painters, Engravers and Sculptors” by the UNESCO commission. The present watercolour dates from 1910, an important year for the artist as it marked his first exhibition in Paris. Lhote has reduced the landscape to a series of interacting and simplified forms. The palette is a synthesis of greens and greys while the lightness of touch and the construction of shapes absolutely convey the image of a sunlit country road and reveal Lhote’s absorption of the work of Cézanne. 154
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