Albert Gleizes was a French artist, theoretician, philosopher, a self-proclaimed founder of Cubism and an influence on the School of Paris. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du "Cubisme", 1912. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists. He was also a member of Der Sturm, and his many theoretical writings were originally most appreciated in Germany, where especially at the Bauhaus his ideas were given thoughtful consideration. Gleizes spent four crucial years in New York, and played an important role in making America aware of modern art. He was a member of the Society of Independent Artists, founder of the Ernest-Renan Association, and both a founder and participant in the Abbaye de Créteil. Gleizes exhibited regularly at Léonce Rosenberg's Galerie de l’Effort Moderne in Paris; he was also a founder, organizer and director of Abstraction-Création. From the mid-1920s to the late 1930s much of his energy went into writing, e.g., La Peinture et ses lois, Vers une conscience plastique: La Forme et l’histoire and Homocentrisme.
Paintings by Albert Gleizes
The Bathers (Gleizes) (1912)
The Bathers (French: Les Baigneuses) is a large oil painting created at the outset of 1912 by the French artist Albert Gleizes. It was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris during the spring of 1912; the Salon de la Société Normande de Peinture Moderne, Rouen, summer 1912; and the Salon de la Section d'Or, autumn 1912. The painting was reproduced in Du "Cubisme", written by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger the same year: the first and only manifesto on Cubism. Les Baigneuses, while still 'readable' in the figurative or representational sense, exemplifies the mobile, dynamic fragmentation of form and multiple perspective characteristic of Cubism at the outset of 1912. Highly sophisticated, both in theory and in practice, this aspect of simultaneity would soon become identified with the practices of the Section d'Or group. Gleizes deploys these techniques in "a radical, personal and coherent manner". Purchased in 1937, the painting is exhibited in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris.
Les Baigneuses is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 105 x 171 cm (41.3 by 67.3 inches), signed Albert Gleizes and dated 1912, lower left. This work, painted at the outset of 1912, represents a series of naked elegant women at various points in the landscape foreground, their reflections along with the blue of the sky echoing off the water at the lower edge of the canvas. Beyond the bathers can be observed protruding rock-like formations or boulders—with highlights of primary color—that appear to espouse elements of the foreground. Above these cliffs are found several deciduous woody plants of the genus Populus. Though native to many areas of the Northern Hemisphere, the Poplar, with its fastigiate branches tapered towards the top, is especially iconic of the western suburbs of Paris (la banlieue ouest) where Gleizes lived, 24 Avenue Gambetta, Courbevoie. The Gleizes family moved to Avenue Gambetta in 1887. Towards the end of the 19th century and extending through the early 20th century, Courbevoie witnessed a rapid growth in population, and a surge in the development of crafts, industry and transport (including rail). Such a scene of naked bathers actually occurring would have been highly unlikely in Courbevoie, or anywhere else near the Parisian capital.
Man on a Balcony (1912)
Man on a Balcony (also known as Portrait of Dr. Théo Morinaud and 'L'Homme au balcon), is a large oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). The painting was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1912 (no. 689). The Cubist contribution to the salon created a controversy in the French Parliament about the use of public funds to provide the venue for such 'barbaric art'. Gleizes was a founder of Cubism, and demonstrates the principles of the movement in this monumental painting (over six feet tall) with its projecting planes and fragmented lines. The large size of the painting reflects Gleizes's ambition to show it in the large annual salon exhibitions in Paris, where he was able with others of his entourage to bring Cubism to wider audiences.
In February 1913, Gleizes and other artists introduced the new style of modern art known as Cubism to an American audience at the Armory Show in New York City, Chicago and Boston. In addition to Man on a balcony (no. 196), Gleizes exhibited his 1910 painting Femme aux Phlox (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).
Woman with Phlox (1910)
Woman with Phlox (French: La Femme aux Phlox) is an oil painting created in 1910 by the French artist Albert Gleizes. The painting was exhibited in Room 41 at the Salon des Indépendants in the Spring of 1911 (no. 2612); the exhibition that introduced Cubism as a group manifestation to the general public for the first time. The complex collection of geometric masses in restrained colors exhibited in Room 41 created a scandal from which Cubism spread throughout Paris, France, Europe and the rest of the world. It was from the preview of the works by Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, Henri Le Fauconnier, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger at the 1911 Indépendants that the term 'Cubism' can be dated. La Femme aux Phlox was again exhibited the following year at the Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie, 1912 (no. 35). La Femme aux Phlox was reproduced in The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations (Les Peintres Cubistes) by Guillaume Apollinaire, published in 1913. The same year, the painting was again revealed to the general public, this time in the United States, at the International Exhibition of Modern Art (The Armory Show), New York, Chicago, and Boston (no. 195). The work is now in the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Gift of the Esther Florence Whinery Goodrich Foundation in 1965.
La Femme aux Phlox is an oil on canvas with dimensions 81.6 x 100.2 cm (32.1 by 39.4 inches) signed and dated 'Alb Gleizes 10'. Created during the second half of 1910, the painting represents a woman sitting in an interior setting, with a vase of flowers (phloxes) in front and another to her left. The window behind the sitter opens out onto an exterior scene, the whole blurring the distinction between interior and exterior.
Portrait of an Army Doctor (1914)
Portrait of an Army Doctor (in French Portrait d'un médecin militaire) is an oil-on-canvas painting created during 1914–15 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. Painted at the fortress city of Toul (Lorraine) while Gleizes served in the military during the First World War, the painting's abstract circular rhythms and intersecting aslant planes announce the beginning of the second synthetic phase of Cubism. The work represents Gleizes's commanding officer, Major Mayer-Simon Lambert (1870–1943), the regimental surgeon in charge of the military hospital at Toul. At least eight preparatory sketches, gouaches and watercolors of the work have survived, though Portrait of an Army Doctor is one of Gleizes's only major oil paintings of the period.
As other wartime works by Gleizes, Portrait of an Army Doctor represents a break from the first phase of Cubism. These wartime works mark "the beginning of an attempt to preserve specific and individual visual characteristics while experimenting with a radically different compositional treatment in which broad planes, angled from the perimeter, meet circles." (Robbins, 1964) Rather than based on the analysis of volumetric objects, the artist strove toward synthesis; something that originated in unity.
Football Players (1913)
Football Players (French: Les Joueurs de football) is a 1912–13 painting by the French artist Albert Gleizes. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, March–May 1913 (no. 1293). From September through December 1913 the painting was exhibited at Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon, Berlin (no. 147). The work was featured at Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona, 29 November–12 December 1916 (no. 31), Gleizes' first one-person show. The work was again exhibited at Galeries Dalmau 16 October–6 November 1926 (no. 7).
Stylistically Gleizes' Football Players exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in Du "Cubisme", written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger. Guillaume Apollinaire wrote about Les Joueurs de football in an article titled "Le Salon des indépendants", published in L'Intransigeant, 18 March 1913, and again in "A travers le Salon des indépendants", published in Montjoie!, Numéro Spécial, 18 March 1913.
Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon (1911)
Le Chemin, Paysage à Meudon, also known as Paysage avec personage, is an oil on canvas painted in 1911 by the artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The work was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants during the spring of 1911, Paris; Les Indépendants, Musée moderne de Bruxelles, 1911; Galeries Dalmau, Exposicio d'art cubista, Barcelona, 1912; Galerie La Boétie, Salon de La Section d'Or, 1912. The painting was reproduced in the journal Le Siècle (1912) in an article titled Enquête sur le Cubisme, by Olivier Hourcade.
Le Chemin was identified by Hector Feliciano as having been plundered by the Nazis from the home of collector Alphonse Kann during World War II. It was returned to the heirs of Alphonse Kann in July 1997 and placed at public auctions in New York (1999) and London (2010) respectively.
The Publisher Eugène Figuière (1913)
The Publisher Eugene Figuiere (French: Portrait de l'éditeur Eugène Figuière) is a painting created by the French artist Albert Gleizes, from 1913. This work was exhibited at the Salon d'Automne, 1913 (no. 768) and Moderni Umeni, 45th Exhibition of SVU Mánes in Prague 1914 (no. 47), and several major exhibitions the following years. Executed in a highly Cubist idiom, the work nevertheless retains recognizable elements relative to its subject matter. The painting, reproduced in Comœdia, 14 November 1913, represents Eugène Figuière. Head of his own publishing company, Figuière strove to be identified with every modern development. In 1912 he published the first and only manifesto on Cubism entitled Du "Cubisme", written by Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger. In 1913 Figuière published Les Peintres Cubistes, Méditations Esthétiques (The Cubist Painters, Aesthetic Meditations), by Guillaume Apollinaire. The painting, purchased directly from the artist in 1948, is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, France.
Portrait of Eugène Figuière is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 143.5 by 101.5 cm (56.5 x 40 inches) signed and dated "Alb Gleizes 13", lower right. Studies for this work likely began during the spring or summer of 1913 while the full portrait was completed during the late summer or early fall of 1913. The work represents Eugène Figuière who is closely associated with Gleizes' friends from the Abbaye de Créteil, Jacques Nayral and Alexandre Mercereau.
Portrait of Jacques Nayral (1911)
Portrait of Jacques Nayral (also known as Portrait de Jacques Nayral) is a large oil painting created in 1911 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). It was exhibited in Paris at the Salon d'Automne of 1911 (no. 609), the Salon de la Section d'Or, 1912 (no. 38), and reproduced in Du "Cubisme" written by Jean Metzinger and Albert Gleizes in 1912, the first and only manifesto on Cubism. Metzinger in 1911 described Gleizes' painting as 'a great portrait'. Portrait of Jacques Nayral, one of Gleizes' first major Cubist works, while still 'readable' in the figurative or representational sense, exemplifies the mobile, dynamic fragmentation of form characteristic of Cubism at the outset of 1911. Highly sophisticated in theory and in practice, this aspect of simultaneity would soon become identified with the practices of the Section d'Or. Here, Gleizes deploys these techniques in a radical, personal and coherent manner.
Jacques Nayral (a pseudonym for Joseph Houot) was a young modernist poet, dramatist, publisher and occasional sports writer, who shared with Gleizes a passion for the theories of Henri Bergson. He was a friend of Gleizes and married his sister Mireille in 1912. Gleizes began work on his portrait in 1910. The interfusion and interrelation between the sitter and the background of the painting reflect Bergson’s concepts about the simultaneity of experience. It was avant-garde works such as this widely exhibited portrait that fed the public outcry against Cubism. "Its scale echoes the large-scale paintings of the official exhibitions, while its style subverts that tradition". (Tate Modern)
Woman with Animals (1914)
Woman with Animals, originally referred to as La dame aux bêtes and Portrait de Mme D.V. or Madame Raymond Duchamp-Villon, is a painting created late 1913 and completed during the month of February, 1914, by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. The painting was exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants, Paris, 1 March – 30 April 1914 (titled Portrait de Mme D.V.). Woman with animals is executed in a personal Cubist style noted by the fusing background and figure, the multiple perspective or successive views at various moments in time of the Mrs. Duchamp-Villon's face and other elements, the freestyle brushstrokes delineating juxtaposing planes. The work was restored in 1940 by Jacques Villon and Robert Delaunay. Formerly in the collection of Marcel Duchamp, the work—along with a 1913 lavis and gouache study of the same subject entitled La femme aux bêtes—has been in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy, since 1940.
Woman with animals (Madame Raymond Duchamp-Villon) is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 196.4 x 114.1 cm (77.3 by 45.9 inches), signed and dated Alb Gleizes, 1914, lower right.
Woman with Black Glove (1920)
Woman with Black Glove (French: Femme au gant noir, or Femme Assise) is a painting by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes. Painted in 1920, after returning to Paris in the wake of World War I, the paintings highly abstract structure is consistent with style of experimentation that transpired during the second synthetic phase of Cubism, called Crystal Cubism. As other post-wartime works by Gleizes, Woman with Black Glove represents a break from the first phase of Cubism, with emphasis placed on flat surface activity and large overlapping geometric planes.
There are several smaller versions of Woman with Black Glove, illustrating a facet of Gleizes' pursuits during the early 1920s: "reminiscences of specific reality evoked within the context of increasingly careful picture construction", writes art historian Daniel Robbins.
Man in a Hammock (1913)
Man in a Hammock (French: L'Homme au hamac) is a painting created by the French artist Albert Gleizes, from 1913. The work was exhibited at Moderni Umeni, SVU Mánes, Vystava, Prague, February – March 1914, no. 41; and Der Sturm, Berlin, July – August 1914. The painting was mentioned by Guillaume Apollinaire in Paris-Journal, 3 July 1914. It was later reproduced in Albert Gleizes, L'Épopée, Le Rouge et le Noir, October 1929, p. 81, and Chroniques d'Art, 1960, p. 405. Stylistically Gleizes' painting exemplifies the principle of mobile perspective laid out in Du "Cubisme", written by himself and French painter Jean Metzinger. Evidence suggests that the man reclining in the hammock is indeed Jean Metzinger. Formerly in the collection of Metzinger, the first owner of the painting, Man in a Hammock forms part of the permanent collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York.
Man in a Hammock is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 130 by 155.5 cm (51.2 x 61.2 inches) signed and dated "Alb Gleizes 13", lower left. Painted in 1913, the work "presents an interesting synthesis of back and forth motion," writes art historian Daniel Robbins (Guggenheim, 1964), "and introduces a composition based on the intersection of powerful diagonals". Man in a Hammock is related to a number of other works, such as a watercolor and a sepia ink over pencil drawing from 1909, a pencil and ink dated 1913, in addition to at least three other works in various media. A large and finished painting of L'Homme au hamac dating from the summer of 1909 is on the reverse of Houses among Trees, 113.5 x 154 cm, 1910. In both the proto-Cubist version and in a small oil sketch (formerly in the collection of Ida Bienert, Dresden) the man wears a large sombrero.
Harvest Threshing (1912)
Le Dépiquage des Moissons, also known as Harvest Threshing, and The Harvesters, is an immense oil painting created in 1912 by the French artist, theorist and writer Albert Gleizes (1881–1953). It was first revealed to the general public at the Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie in Paris, October 1912 (no. 43). This work, along with La Ville de Paris (City of Paris) by Robert Delaunay, is the largest and most ambitious Cubist painting undertaken during the pre-War Cubist period. Formerly in the collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, this monumental painting by Gleizes is exhibited at the National Museum of Western Art, in Tokyo, Japan.
The work is an oil painting on canvas with dimensions 269 x 353 cm (106 x 138 in), signed and dated lower right, Gleizes, 1912. "Harvest Threshing", wrote curator and art historian Daniel Robbins for the Gleizes Guggenheim Retrospective in 1964, "summarizes Gleizes' interest in presenting an epic panorama of mountains, valleys, clouds and smoke, towns, workers and wheat, a simultaneous celebration of the harvest, nature and man in idealistic harmony." Gleizes' painting, as Henri Le Fauconnier's Abundance, likely takes its theme from the social and synthetic program of the Abbaye de Créteil, and too, from the poem of Henri-Martin Barzun, La Montagne, Poèmes légendaires, part 5 of La Terrestre Tragedie (Paris, Mercure de France, 1908): Les Moissonneurs dans les Epis, armes de faux et de faucilles... (pp. 49–56).