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Lot 15AR
Moïse Kisling(1891-1953)Vase de pavots
19 June 2012, 15:00 BST
London, New Bond Street£35,000 - £55,000
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Moïse Kisling (1891-1953)
Vase de pavots
signed 'Kisling' (lower right)
oil on canvas
75.5 x 61cm (29 3/4 x 24in).
signed 'Kisling' (lower right)
oil on canvas
75.5 x 61cm (29 3/4 x 24in).
Footnotes
The authenticity of this work has kindly been confirmed by Monsieur Jean Kisling and will be included in his forthcoming supplement to the Kisling catalogue raisonné.
Executed with clean crisp lines and suffused with bold colours, Vase de pavots is a fine example of Kisling's maturing style. Having assimilated early Impressionist and Cubist influences, the artist declared in 1924 that he wished to pursue an individual style in order 'to produce truly personal works for which I am fully responsible.' (quoted in J. Kessel, Kisling, New York, 1971, p.36).
As a colourist, he used vivid pigments to convey his immediate reaction to figures, landscapes or still lifes, as in the present work. The organic curves of the petals and leaves are delicately drawn and contrast both to the simple vertical vase which contains them and to the geometric shadows of the background, emphasised by his directional brushwork. Kisling's forms might almost appear cold in their concise representation, but are brought to life with the bright red and green pigments which fill them. The simplicity of the warm background allows the flowers to come to the fore and stand proudly as the subject of the work.
In a review for Le Figaro, André Warnod remarked that Kisling's works 'appear to be in bloom, a symphony of pure and vivid colors. They bring us the pleasure, the joy of living that we so badly need. Kisling's art is unadorned, simplified. The painter knows how to leave out the superfluous, the useless. Everything in his paintings is bright, sharp and neat [...] with a marvelous sense of contours'. (Ibid., p.43).