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Sylvain Vigny
Large French Expressionist Oil Portrait, The Seated Beauty.

About the Item

Large French Mid 20th Century, oil on paper laid on canvas, portrait of a seated female figure by Sylvain Vigny. The painting is signed bottom left and presented in a very fine carved and gilt Montparnasse frame. A wonderful French Expressionist portrait of a seated female figure in a rich interior. The beautiful young girl looks out at us from her chair, wearing a fine gown she holds a small posy of flowers in her right hand. Vigny has caught her features in his characteristic style, the detail only in the shadow. He has captured the fine wispy nature of her dress as a contrast to the rich fabrics of the curtains and upholstery surrounding her and her bare thighs resting on the chair. A powerful portrait capturing beauty, sexuality and opulence. If Sylvain Vigny had stayed in Paris in 1934 instead of moving to Nice on the Côte d’Azur, his highly imaginative and original work might be better known. Comparisons with better-known modernist artists including Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Rouault and Raoul Dufy set him in an appropriate and favourable context. A self-taught artist, he grew up in Vienna and emigrated to France in the 1920s, living in Paris from 1929 to 1934. After he had moved to Nice early in 1934, he exhibited in galleries along the Mediterranean coast and in Switzerland, with major exhibitions in New York in 1938 and at the Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris in 1948. Sylvain Vigny was part of an important artistic community in Nice, which included Jean Moulin who owned the Galerie d’Art Roman, the artist Jean Cassarini, writers Pierre and Jacques Prévert, filmmaker Nikos Papatakis, and jazz musician Django Reinhardt. By the mid-1950s he had became a recognised figure on the Nice art scene, alongside his friends Benjamin Vautier, Claude Morini and Bernard Damiano. Sylvain Vigny was as much at home painting moody street and coastal scenes to earn a living as he was producing more experimental work, often featuring rather gaunt, distorted and tragic figures in a minimalist, modernist style, and using unusual colour palettes to match the subject matter. In 1937 he produced a set of lithographs for the only book he illustrated, a revised edition of the anarchist poet Georges Faillet’s (writing under the pseudonym Fagus) extended poem 'La Danse Macabre'. In 1961 a monograph on Sylvain Vigny was published, designed as a portfolio, with a text by Jean Cassou.
  • Creator:
    Sylvain Vigny (1903 - 1970, Austrian)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 35.83 in (91 cm)Width: 29.73 in (75.5 cm)Depth: 2.37 in (6 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
    Some scratches to the surface, wear, losses and splits to the frame.
  • Gallery Location:
    Cotignac, FR
  • Reference Number:
    Seller: LG/Vigny1stDibs: LU1430215479062

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