MAURICE DE VLAMINCK (1876-1958)
View of a village Oil on canvas. Signed lower right. H: 60 cm W: 73 cm Vlaminck has here engaged in painting a tormented landscape, without an explosion of color, this can only be considered half-heartedly and leaves room for a dark palette. We are faced with an almost devastated and dark landscape. The gesture itself is irregular as if accidental and feverish, the painter transfigures an anxious and wounded reality. “What I could only have done in society by throwing a bomb, which would have led me to the scaffold, I tried to achieve in painting, by using pure colors coming out of their tube . I thus satisfied my desire to destroy, to disobey, in order to recreate a sensitive, living and liberated world[.] I raised all the tones, I transposed into an orchestration of pure colors all the feelings that were perceptible to me. I was a tender barbarian and full of violence.”