André was a French artist,
painter, sculptor and co-founder of Fauvism with Henri Matisse.
Derain and Matisse worked
together through the summer of 1905 in the Mediterranean village of Collioure
and later that year displayed their highly innovative paintings at the Salon
d'Automne.
The vivid, unnatural colors led
the critic Louis Vauxcelles to derisively dub their works as les Fauves, or
"the wild beasts", marking the start of the Fauvist movement. In
March 1906, the noted art dealer Ambroise Vollard sent Derain to London to
produce a series of paintings with the city as subject. In 30 paintings (29 of
which are still extant), Derain presented a portrait of London that was
radically different from anything done by previous painters of the city such as
Whistler or Monet.
With bold colors and
compositions, Derain painted multiple pictures of the Thames and Tower Bridge.
These London paintings remain among his most popular work. Art critic T.G
Rosenthal: "Not since Monet has anyone made London seem so fresh and yet
remain quintessentially English.
Some of his views of the Thames
use the Pointillist technique of multiple dots, although by this time, because
the dots have become much larger, it is rather more simply the separation of
colours called Divisionism and it is peculiarly effective in conveying the
fragmentation of colour in moving water in sunlight."
In 1907 art dealer Daniel-Henry
Kahnweiler purchased Derain's entire studio, granting Derain financial
stability. He experimented with stone sculpture and moved to Montmartre to be
near his friend Pablo Picasso and other noted artists. Fernande Olivier,
Picasso's mistress at the time, described Derain as: Slim, elegant, with a
lively colour and enamelled black hair. With an English chic, somewhat
striking. Fancy waistcoats, ties in crude colours, red and green. Always a pipe
in his mouth, phlegmatic, mocking, cold, an arguer.
At Montmartre, Derain began to
shift from the brilliant Fauvist palette to more muted tones, showing the
influence of Cubism and Paul Cézanne. (According to Gertrude Stein, there is a
tradition that Derain discovered and was influenced by African sculpture before
the Cubists did.)
Derain supplied woodcuts in
primitivist style for an edition of Guillaume Apollinaire's first book of
prose, L'enchanteur pourrissant (1909). He displayed works at the Neue
Künstlervereinigung in Munich in 1910, in 1912 at the secessionist Der Blaue
Reiter and in 1913 at the seminal Armory Show in New York. He also illustrated
a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.
At about this time Derain's
work began overtly reflecting his study of the Old Masters. The role of color
was reduced and forms became austere; the years 1911–1914 are sometimes
referred to as his gothic period.
In 1914 he was mobilized for military service
in World War I and until his release in 1919 he would have little time for
painting, although in 1916 he provided a set of illustrations for André
Breton's first book, Mont de Piete.
After the war, Derain won new
acclaim as a leader of the renewed classicism then ascendant. With the wildness
of his Fauve years far behind, he was admired as an upholder of tradition.
In 1919 he designed the ballet La Boutique fantasque
for Diaghilev, leader of the Ballets Russes.[13] A major success, it would lead
to his creating many ballet designs.
The 1920s marked the height of
his success, as he was awarded the Carnegie Prize in 1928 and began to exhibit
extensively abroad—in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, New York City and
Cincinnati, Ohio.
During the German occupation of
France in World War II, Derain lived primarily in Paris and was much courted by
the Germans because he represented the prestige of French culture.
Derain accepted an invitation to make an
official visit to Germany in 1941, and traveled with other French artists to
Berlin to attend a Nazi exhibition of an officially endorsed artist, Arno
Breker.
Derain's presence in Germany was used
effectively by Nazi propaganda, and after the Liberation he was branded a
collaborator and ostracized by many former supporters.
A year before his death, he
contracted an eye infection from which he never fully recovered. He died in
Garches, Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France in 1954 when he was struck by a
moving vehicle