Albert Gleizes
| Albert Gleizes | |
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 Albert Gleizes, 1915, Composition, For "Jazz", Pour "Jazz", oil on board, 73 x 73 cm |
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| Birth name | Albert Léon Gleizes |
| Born | December 8, 1881 Paris |
| Died | June 23, 1953 (aged 71) Saint-Rémy-de-Provence |
| Nationality | French |
| Field | painting |
| Movement | cubism |
| Influenced by | impressionism |
Albert Gleizes (8 December 1881 – 23 June 1953), was a French painter, theorist and writer. Born Albert Léon Gleizes and raised in Paris, he was the son of a fabric designer who ran a large industrial design workshop. He was also the nephew of Léon Comerre, a successful portrait painter who won the 1875 Prix de Rome. From 1910 Albert Gleizes was directly involved with Cubism, both as an artist and principle theorist of the movement. Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger wrote the first major treatise on Cubism, Du "Cubisme" in 1912. Gleizes was a founding member of the Section d'Or group of artists.
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[edit] Early life
The young Albert Gleizes did not like school and often skipped classes to idle away the time writing poetry and wandering through the nearby Montmartre cemetery. Finally, after completing his secondary schooling, Gleizes spent four years in the French army then began pursuing a career as a painter, primarily doing landscapes. Initially influenced by the Impressionists, he was only twenty-one years of age when his work titled La Seine à Asnières was exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902.
In 1907 Gleizes and some of his friends pursued the idea of creating the Abbaye de Créteil, a self-supporting community of artists which would allow them to develop their art free of any commercial concerns. For nearly a year, at a large house in Créteil, Gleizes along with other painters, poets, musicians and writers, gathered to create. A lack of income forced them to give up their cherished Abbaye de Créteil in early 1908 and Gleizes moved temporarily into La Ruche, the artist commune in the Montparnasse Quarter of Paris.
[edit] Cubism
Gleizes' evolving cubism saw him exhibit at the Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1911 in a room together with Robert Delaunay, Jean Metzinger, Henri le Fauconnier and Fernand Léger. The result was a public scandal which brought Cubism for the first time to the attention of the general public (Picasso and Braque were exhibiting in a private gallery selling to a small circle of connoisseurs). Gleizes then collaborated with Jean Metzinger to produce a theoretical essay about cubism - Du "Cubisme" - that was published in 1912. In the fall of that year, he joined the Puteaux Group which met in the studio of Jacques Villon (Gaston Duchamp) and also included Villon's brothers, Raymond Duchamp-Villon and Marcel Duchamp. In February 1913, Gleizes and other artists introduced the new style of painting to an American audience at the Armory Show in New York City.
With the outbreak of World War I, Albert Gleizes re-enlisted in the French army. He was put in charge of organizing entertainment for the troops and as a result was approached by Jean Cocteau to design the set and costumes for the William Shakespeare play, A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Discharged from the military in the fall of 1915, Gleizes and his new wife, Juliette Roche, the daughter of a prominent and wealthy French statesman, moved to New York City. From there, the couple sailed to Barcelona where they were joined by Marie Laurencin plus Francis Picabia and his wife. The group spent the summer painting at the resort area of Tossa del Mar and in December Gleizes had the first solo exhibition of his works at the Galeries Dalmau in Barcelona. Returning to New York city, Gleizes began writing poetic sketches in verse and in prose. Traveling to Bermuda, he painted a number of landscapes but when the war in Europe ended he returned to France where his career evolved more towards teaching through writing and he became involved with the committee of the Unions Intellectuelles Françaises. In 1927, still dreaming of the communal days at the Abbaye de Créteil, he founded an artist's colony at a rented house called the Moly-Sabata in Sablons near his wife's family home in Serrières in the Ardèche département in the Rhône Valley.
In 1931, Gleizes was part of the committee of Abstraction-Création that acted as a forum for international non-representational art. By this time, his work reflected the strengthening of his religious convictions and his 1932 book, La Forme et l’histoire examines Celtic, Romanesque, and Oriental art. On tour in Poland and Germany, he gave lectures titled Art et Religion, Art et Production and Art et Science and wrote a book on Robert Delaunay but it was never published. In 1937, Gleizes was hired to paint murals for the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the Paris World’s Fair. He collaborated with Delaunay in the Pavillon de l'Air and with Léopold Survage and Fernand Léger for the Pavillon de l'Union des Artistes Modernes. At the end of 1938, Gleizes volunteered to participate in the free seminars and discussion groups for young painters set up by Robert Delaunay at his Paris studio.
In the late 1930s, the wealthy American art connoisseur Peggy Guggenheim purchased a great deal of the new art in Paris including works by Albert Gleizes. She brought these works to the United States which today form part of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. During World War II, Gleizes and his wife remained in France under the German occupation. His religious convictions deepened and at war's end he was hailed by some as having laid out the principles for a renewal of religious art. In 1948, Gleizes accepted an offer from a publisher in Casablanca to create a series of etchings illustrating the Pensées sur l'Homme et Dieu of Blaise Pascal. In 1951, he was made a jury member for the Prix de Rome and the government of France awarded him the Legion of Honor. In 1952, he did his last major work, a fresco titled Eucharist that he painted for a Jesuit chapel in Chantilly.
Albert Gleizes died in Avignon in the Vaucluse département on 23 June 1953 and was interred in his wife's family mausoleum in the cemetery at Serrières.
[edit] Bibliography
- Peter Brooke: Albert Gleizes - For and Against the Twentieth Century, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 2001, ISBN 0-300-08964-3
- Albert Gleizes: Art and Religion, Art and Science, Art and Production, translation, introduction and notes by Peter Brooke, London, Francis Boutle publishers, 1999, ISBN 0-9532388-5-7. Talks given in the 1930s reflecting Gleizes's mature views on the relations of Cubism to other aspects of our intellectual and moral life.
- Albert Gleizes: Painting and its laws, (with Gino Severini: From Cubism to Classicism), translation, introduction and notes by Peter Brooke, London, Francis Boutle publishers, 2001, ISBN 1-903427-05-3. Originally published in 1923-4. The key text in which Gleizes formulated the technique of 'translation' and 'rotation' as the permanent acquisition of Cubism.
- Albert Gleizes: L'Homme devenu peintre, preface by Alain Tapié, Paris, SOMOGY éditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, ISBN 2-85056-325-0. Written in 1948, Gleizes's last book-length writing which may be read as his testament.
- Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger: Du "Cubisme". An English translation is available, together with other writings of Gleizes from the pre-war period, in Mark Antliff and Patricia Leighten (ed): A Cubism Reader - Documents and Criticism, 1906-1914, University of Chicago Press, 2008.
- Michel Massenet: Albert Gleizes, Paris, SOMOGY éditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, ISBN 2-85056-341-2. Personal reflections by a distinguished French writer and former President of the Fondation Albert Gleizes.
- Anne Varichon: Albert Gleizes - catalogue raisonné, 2 vols, Paris, SOMOGY éditions d'art/Fondation Albert Gleizes, 1998, ISBN 2-85056-286-6. Indispensable work of reference.
[edit] External Sources
- Albert Gleizes, illustrated article in French from the website of the Association des Amis de Jean Chevalier. Chevalier, a painter based in Lyon, was closely associated with Gleizes from the late 1930s until Gleizes's death in 1953.
- Albert Gleizes, entry in Wikipédia (translated 24 Oct 2007)
- Examples of the work of Gleizes and his pupils, together with a range of articles and translations of his writings can be found at the Form and History section of Peter Brooke's website
- Further information, in French and English, can be found at the website of the Fondation Albert Gleizes, copyright holders of Gleizes's work.
