Roger de La Fresnaye

Synopsis.

A French artist and sculptor whose works are known all over the world as the best examples of Cubism in painting.

Roger de la Fresnaye was born in a wealthy aristocratic family in Le Mans Department of Sarthe. His father was a soldier and gave his son a classical education. As a young man, he studied at several Paris art schools, including the School of Fine Arts and the Ranson Academy in Paris. One of the teachers of de la Fresnaye was the school’s founder, artist Paul Ranson, as well as P. Serusier and M .Denis, who influenced the early Symbolist style of the artist.

A student of the Ranson Academy, Roger de la Fresnaye worked in a softer and more relaxed version of Cubism than his colleagues, preferring recognizable forms of complete abstraction. Throughout his rather short life, the artist participated in several exhibitions at the Salon of Independent and at the Autumn Salon, was a member of “Golden Section”, the group of Cubists, and presented his paintings at the famous exhibition of abstract artists at the gallery of La Boétie in Paris. Together with his friends, he designed the famous “Cubist house”, presented at the Autumn Salon of 1912. For this project, which was a mock-up of a whole apartment house, Roger de la Fresnaye created wooden things, interior doors, unique watches, candlesticks and other decorative and interior elements.

Key ideas:

– Roger de la Fresnaye worked in his own bright style, based on the Cubist division of the form, geometrization of objects and a wonderful sense of color.

– In his work, the artist wanted to go beyond the monochrome or muted tones of the Cubists towards a more radical use of the color palette, and he did it. Like his companion Robert Delone, Fresnaye used open red, blue and yellow, boldly combining them in large-format canvases depicting people, landscapes and still-life objects.

– The art of de la Fresnaye can be called the most realistic among the Cubists. The artist’s paintings do not investigate shape and space, like the works of Picasso and Delaunay, but rather resemble a colorful collage of separate color planes that preserve their integrity and the recognizability of the depicted object. Unlike other Cubists, he never departed from the real appearance of things, but merely simplified them, replacing complex forms with simple geometric figures, and subtle nuances of colors with large local spots. At the same time, the Fresnaye’s original interpretation of Cubism has a shade of lyricism and the spiritual elevation of the author.

– Although the paintings of la Fresnaye were of great importance for the popularization of Cubism and the expansion of its influence immediately before the First World War, he later abandoned Abstract art and became one of the most influential supporters of the traditional Realism of France.

– In the last years of his career, the artist painted portraits and scenes from life in a realistic manner. A vivid example of such a work is the “Portrait of Guynemer”, created in 1923. In addition, during his service at the front, de la Fresnaye created a series of figurative drawings depicting soldiers’ life in the field.