Web Quotableonline.com Frasescelebres.org Greatbookscollection.org

Raoul Dufy (June 3, 1877 – March 23, 1953)
was a France|French Fauvism|Fauvist painter born
in Le Havre in Normandy. He developed a colourful,
decorative style that became fashionable for
designs for ceramics, textiles and decorative
schemes for public buildings. He is noted for
scenes of open-air social events.

Dufy was born at Le Havre, one of a family of nine
members. He left school at the age of 14 to work
in a coffee importing company. In 1895 when he was
18, he started evening classes in art at Le Havre
École des Beaux-Arts. He and Othon Friesz, a
school friend, studied the works of Eugène Boudin
in the museum in Le Havre. 


In 1900, after a year of military service, he won
a scholarship enabling him to attend the École
Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he was a
fellow student of Georges Braque. The
impressionist landscapists, such as Claude Monet
and Camille Pissarro, influenced him

Introduced to Berthe Weill in 1902, she showed his
work in her gallery. Henri Matisse's Luxe, Calme
et Volupté, which Dufy saw at the Salon des
Indépendants in 1905, was a revelation to the
young artist and directed his interest towards
Fauvism. Les Fauves (wild beasts) emphasised
bright colour and rich bold contours in their
work, and Dufy’s painting reflects this approach
until about 1909, when contact with the work of
Paul CĂ©zanne led him to adopt a somewhat subtler
technique. It was not until 1920, after he had
flirted briefly with yet another style, cubism,
that Dufy developed his own distinctive approach
involving  skeletal structures, arranged in a
diminished perspective, and the use of light
washes of colour put on by swift brush strokes in
a manner that came to be known as stenographic.

Dufy's cheerful oils and watercolours depict
yachting scenes, sparkling views of the French
Riviera, chic parties and musical events. The
optimistic and fashionably decorative and
illustrative nature of much of his work has meant
that his output is less highly critically valued
than artists who treat a wider range of social
concerns.

In 1938, Dufy completed one of the largest
paintings ever done, a huge and immensely popular
epic to electricity, the fresco La FĂ©e
Electicité for the Exposition Internationale de
Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne
(1937)|Exposition Internationale in Paris.

Dufy also acquired a reputation as an illustrator
and an applied artist. He changed the face of
fashion and fabric design with his work for Paul
Poiret. He painted murals for public buildings,
and produced a prodigious number of tapestries and
ceramic designs. His  plates appear in books by
Guillaume Apollinaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and
André Gide. 

Dufy died near Forcalquier, France, on March 23,
1953, and was buried not far from Matisse in the
Cimiez Monastery Cemetery in Cimiez, a suburb of
the city of Nice, France.

==References==
Collier's Encyclopedia (8-413c),1986

==External Links==
http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Raoul_Dufy/
Raoul Dufy paintings