Henri Matisse | Oil Painting Express

Art News: Lost but Not Always Found: The Paris Art Heist

May

2010

It’s rare for the visual arts to make headline news, and it’s unfortunate when they do in a story like this one. Le pigeon aux petits pois, painting by Pablo Picasso On the night of May 19, a masked man entered the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris through a window and stole five oil painted pictures, removing them from their frames and escaping without setting off an alarm. The story quickly made headlines, partially because of the crime’s lurid intrigue and partially because of the estimated value of the words – over $120 million. Since then, we’ve all seen a picture of the painting Le pigeon aux petits pois by Picasso or of La Pastorale by Matisse alongside an article. Those two landscape portraits are usually the only ones mentioned, as the significant but lesser known Modigliani, Léger, and Braque works are often unfortunately lumped together as “three other paintings”.

What can this man possibly be planning to do with his contraband? Plenty of art thieves actually count on simply ransoming the stolen goods back to the owner. More strangely, after a painting has passed through several different owners, it can often be sold to an unknowing customer who is led to believe that the painting is a very high quality reproduction – not the work itself but a skillful oil painting from a picture of the original. What’s most likely in this situation is a third option. Although the value of a stolen painting is markedly less than the official value, the underground art market is unfortunately very healthy. The authorities seem to suspect that this is what’s happening with the five stolen oil portraits, as Interpol has issued a global alert, implying they believe the works may already have been removed from France.

Oil Painting Through the Ages: Fauvism

October

2009

Fauvism, from the french term wild beasts, was a short lived romp of bold, saturated colors with an emphasis on an abstract and simple style of painting. Where impressionism retained some realistic qualities and traditional artistic values, Fauvism smeared this over with bright streak of paint, creating the first true break with artistic traditions of the past. Because of this philosophy, Fauvism can be seen as an off-shoot of expressionism, but is really in a category all of it's own. It was a short lived art movement that really only lasted about three years. The leader of this wild and rapid movement would be Henri Matisse.

Matisse would much later be hailed as the greatest artist of the 20th century, along with Picasso. But during the Wild Beast days of the early 1900's he was seen as an artistic madman. In 1907 a group gathered to burn one of Matisse's paintings, Nu Bleu which was seen as very controversial. While a Matisse painting today can fetch $17 million, he could barely feed his family while he was creating those very masterpieces.

Maurice De Vlaminck was the artist other than Matisse most closely affiliated with this movement. Both he and Matisse studied under the same teacher and both were very inspired by Vincent Van Gogh's post impressionism. Vlaminck, after visiting a Van Gogh exhibit for the first time, claimed he loved the artist more than his own Father. He then began painting by squeezing paint from the tube directly to the canvas.