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About Us News Glossary Biographies ... Maurice de Vlaminck Biography Maurice de Vlaminck was born in 1876 in Paris to parents who were bohemian musicians. As an adolescent, Vlaminck planned to make a career as a professional cyclist. Like his parents, he also had musical talent and earned a living through the violin. Maurice de Vlaminck also had a passionate interest in painting which was fostered by Robichon, a French artist. In 1896 he contracted typhoid fever which ended his racing career. Obliged to support himself and his family, he gave violin lessons and eventually joined the military. It was during one of his military leaves at Chatou, that he met Andre Derain. In June 1900, Maurice de Vlaminck and Andre Derain began the school of Chatou which later came to be recognized as the place of origin for the Fauve art movement. In the ensuing years, he met and was influenced by Henri Matisse, who inspired him to collect African masks, and Pablo Picasso. As a member of the Fauvist movement, which flourished from 1905 to 1908, he exhibited with them at the Salon des Independants and d'Automne. He also published a few novels and books of poetry for which Derain made illustrations. Vlaminck not only painted but created a great number of woodcut prints. Many of these image reveal the strong influence of Gauguin and Van Gogh who were then his contemporaries. In painting, Vlaminck adopted Vincent Van Gogh's brightly coloured palette, along with the technique of painting with open brushstrokes. This eventually led to his application of paint directly onto the canvas from the tube. Maurice de Vlaminck's early body of work epitomizes the Fauve revolution. Around 1908, Vlaminck grew dissatisfied withwhat he saw as the formlessness of his early style. He turned his attention to the work of Paul Cézanne and adopted a darker palette, painting many landscapes rendered in a personal expressionist style. In 1920, he turned to a more naturalistic and formally vigorous style. His late work is dominated by colorful and brooding still lifes and landscapes. Despite his departure from the Fauvist style, Vlaminck continued to travel with Derain during the later years of his life and published dozens of autobiographical accounts of his life and his experiences with other artists. Maurice de Vlaminck died in 1958.
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