Maurice de Vlaminck

Born in France in 1876, Maurice de Vlaminck learned to play the violin at a young age and studied painting in his late teens. Along with music and painting, he was a writer of poetry and mildly pornographic novels in 1902 and 1903. Between the years 1904 and 1908 he was considered one of the key artists in the Fauve movement of modern artists who had a similar avant-garde use of intense color. Ignoring details he used landscapes to merely express mood through the use of violent color and brushwork. He began experimenting with “deconstruction,” moving from lack of detail to dabs and streaks of color that convey a sense of motion. His later work displayed a dark palette, punctuated by heavy strokes of contrasting white paint. He died in 1958.