Maurice de Vlaminck On Sale

Maurice de Vlaminck was a French painter, best known as one of the spearheads of the Fauvism movement at the start of the 20th century. His reputation rests predominantly on his landscapes, though he also produced still lifes and portraits. Born in Paris in 1876, Vlaminck had relatively little artistic training and, as a young man, dreamt of becoming a professional cyclist. A chance encounter in 1900, however, when he was nearing the end of his national service in the army, proved fateful. It was with the budding artist, André Derain, whom he met when a train they were aboard derailed. The pair lived in the small town of Chatou, a few miles along the River Seine from Paris, and they chose to complete their homeward journey from the French capital that day on foot. They struck up a friendship, and before long were sharing a studio. Derain and Vlaminck would become, alongside Henri Matisse, the driving forces behind Fauvism, the first avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. Partly inspired by the recent innovations of Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, it was characterised by aggressive brushwork, simplified forms and intense non-naturalistic colours. Its name came from the reaction of a critic in 1905 who compared the artists to fauves (‘wild beasts’). Vlaminck enjoyed painting in primary colours, and is particularly associated with scenes set in and around Chatou. Standout examples include Restaurant de la Machine à Bougival (1905) (today found in the Musée d'Orsay) and The Seine at Chatou (1906) (found in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York). The poet Guillaume Apollinaire hailed Vlaminck as ‘the wildest of the Fauves’. In the years immediately before the outbreak of World War I, the artist’s style shifted. His palette grew slightly more sombre, and there was a greater emphasis on solidity and a landscape's underlying structure. This revealed the influence of Paul Cezanne — the subject of a ground-breaking, posthumous retrospective in Paris in 1907. Vlaminck worked in a munitions factory during the war. His paintings after it were much darker and more realistic than those with which he had made his name. He died in 1958, aged 82.

Decorating with fine art prints — whether they’re figurative prints, abstract prints or another variety — has always been a practical way of bringing a space to life as well as bringing works by an artist you love into your home.

Pursued in the 1960s and ’70s, largely by Pop artists drawn to its associations with mass production, advertising, packaging and seriality, as well as those challenging the primacy of the Abstract Expressionist brushstroke, printmaking was embraced in the 1980s by painters and conceptual artists ranging from David Salle and Elizabeth Murray to Adrian Piper and Sherrie Levine.

Printmaking is the transfer of an image from one surface to another. An artist takes a material like stone, metal, wood or wax, carves, incises, draws or otherwise marks it with an image, inks or paints it and then transfers the image to a piece of paper or other material.

Fine art prints are frequently confused with their more commercial counterparts. After all, our closest connection to the printed image is through mass-produced newspapers, magazines and books, and many people don’t realize that even though prints are editions, they start with an original image created by an artist with the intent of reproducing it in a small batch. Fine art prints are created in strictly limited editions — 20 or 30 or maybe 50 — and are always based on an image created specifically to be made into an edition.

Many people think of revered Dutch artist Rembrandt as a painter but may not know that he was a printmaker as well. His prints have been preserved in time along with the work of other celebrated printmakers such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Andy Warhol. These fine art prints are still highly sought after by collectors.

“It’s another tool in the artist’s toolbox, just like painting or sculpture or anything else that an artist uses in the service of mark making or expressing him- or herself,” says International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) vice president Betsy Senior, of New York’s Betsy Senior Fine Art, Inc.

Because artist’s editions tend to be more affordable and available than his or her unique works, they’re more accessible and can be a great opportunity to bring a variety of colors, textures and shapes into a space.

For tight corners, select small fine art prints as opposed to the oversized bold piece you’ll hang as a focal point in the dining area. But be careful not to choose something that is too big for your space. And feel free to lean into it if need be — not every work needs picture-hanging hooks. Leaning a larger fine art print against the wall behind a bookcase can add a stylish installation-type dynamic to your living room. (Read more about how to arrange wall art here.)

Find fine art prints for sale on 1stDibs today.