‘On n’est pas des fauves’…..By Ellen Turner Hall
What is the heritage of Matisse and Derain in Collioure since 1905, their year of working here side by side? Freedom from the conventional use of colour, line and perspective – as witnessed in paintings from the permanent collection and more recent works by artists in residence.
Derain famously called his tubes of paint “sticks of dynamite”. Colour usurps details in Frédéric Khodja’s Passages, Collioure from 1999, 2013 and 2021. Each colour defines the space and builds a structure of light and shade. Just as black dominated Matisse’s last work in Collioure before the outbreak of World War I, contemporary artist Pascal Fancony’s painting mirrors the master’s paradoxical vision of life and death.
Visiting artists in the thirties and forties were fascinated by the lines of fishing nets draping fishermen’s heads and shoulders as painted by Dane Chamase or sculpting the curve of the Faubourg in Rolande Déchorain’s beach scene. Virgilio Vallmajo’s muscular church tower pierces through the rooflines of the Mouret to stab at the jagged sky looming above Fort St. Elme. Then in 2014 along comes Julien Descossy with a complete disregard for objective reality and paints the two towers – the church and the Dominicains – side by side.
Many thanks !