Raoul Dufy

French painter, graphic artist and designer, a vivid representative of Fauvism and Cubism.
Raul was born into a large family. His father and brothers were fond of music and theater.
The artist is known for his light and joyful canvases depicting rest and holidays. In addition to painting, Raoul Dufy was engaged in illustrations and graphics and showed himself as a talented designer of fabrics, which was very popular and dictated fashion to all of Paris.
The artist was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor, his solo exhibitions were held in Paris, Prague, Zurich, Brussels, New York. He received many large orders, including a huge wall painting devoted to the history of the emergence of electricity for the Paris International Exhibition of 1937.

Key Ideas:

– Raoul Dufy is known as a painter of holidays, and this makes him close to Impressionists. The artist depicts Sunday walks, beach holidays, horse races and other entertainments, leaving the global problems of mankind, the shortcomings of society and philosophical theories aside. He lives today, finding in it so much beauty that involuntarily infects the viewer with his optimism. The main talent of the painter is that he was able to freely transfer to the canvas that ease of being, which sometimes is not enough in everyday life.

– Raoul Dufy’s cheerful and light paintings have their own characteristic feature – an unusual perception of light and color in unusual compositions. The author wants to convey not just the objects that surround him, but his own subjective attitude to what is happening, his own vision. He does it with the help of colors and lines, almost ignoring the real similarity and conformity to forms.

– His compositions are intuitively harmonious. They leave a lot of space for imagination and convey the reality quite schematically.

– Duffy’s canvas is divided into separate color zones, forming the most different combinations of the most diverse shades of scale. Over these color-filled planes, a wavy, openwork pattern is applied. Trees, houses, yachts, people’s figures seem to soar in a translucent air environment. Light haze determines the mood of many canvases.

– “There is a reality and what is visible. This is not the same thing. There is a measurable reality, in terms of the outline, projection, and vertical section. However, what belongs to me is not it, but my own vision of reality. I try to paint what I see and what I understand…”Dufy said.