Michel Loeb

French Naive, Fauvist Oil on Panel Painting "Le Petit Clocher" Michel Loeb

c. 20th century

MADELINE CHRISTINE CLAVIER (1913-2015) Signature: Signed lower right & titled verso Medium: Oil on canvas Provenance: The collection of the artist's family Marie Christine Clavier was born in Saigon, Vietnam in 1913 to French parents and lived there for her formative years. She returned to France as a teenager and began to study painting. Her work quickly developed into whimsical paintings of poetry and songs – harmonized in a unique and distinct painting technique. Her work has an impasto feel and a folk art, outsider artist sensibility to it. Similar in style to Maik and other fantasy realists who use animals, flowers and foliage in their artworks. Marie Clavier painted ro herself rather than for profit as she was quite independently wealthy. She exhibited extensively in the United States in the 1970s especially across Connecticut and New York, showing at various galleries and cultural centres. She had numerous solo exhibitions in the 1970’s- notably at the Maison Francaise in New York and New York University. She showed at Galerie Bernheim Jeune in Paris. She won many awards for her work including Gold Medals and Palme D’Or medals. In 1988 the prestigious art publisher Leopard D’Or produced catalogue book on her life and work – by this point she had virtually given up painting. She died in 2015 aged 102. Bernheim-Jeune gallery is one of the oldest art galleries in Paris. Opened on Rue Laffitte in 1863 by Alexandre Bernheim (1839-1915), friend of Delacroix, Corot and Courbet, it changed location a few times before settling on Avenue Matignon. The gallery promoted realists, Barbizon school paintings and, in 1874, the first impressionist and later post-impressionist painters. It closed in 2019. In 1901, Alexandre Bernheim, with his sons, Josse (1870-1941), and Gaston (1870-1953), organized the first important exhibition of Vincent van Gogh paintings in Paris with the help of art critic Julien Leclercq. In 1906, Bernheim-Jeune frères started presenting works by Pierre Bonnard, Edouard Vuillard, Paul Cezanne, Henri-Edmond Cross, Kees van Dongen, Henri Matisse, Le Douanier Rousseau, Raoul Dufy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Amedeo Modigliani, Maurice Utrillo and Georges Dufrenoy. From 1906 to 1925, art critic Félix Fénéon was the director of the gallery and was instrumental in bringing in the art of Georges Seurat and Umberto Boccioni. In 1922, an exhibition brought together works by Alice Halicka, Auguste Herbin, Pierre Hodé, Moise Kisling, Marie Laurencin, Henri Lebasque, Fernand Leger and Henri Matisse. The gallery now exhibits painters and sculptors in the tradition of the École de Paris and artists such as Jean Carzou, Shelomo Selinger or Pollès. Her style is a recognizable, cheerful, whimsical and a happy creation. Naïve art is any form of visual art that is created by a person who lacks the formal education and training that a professional artist undergoes (in anatomy, art history, technique, perspective, ways of seeing). Unlike folk art, naïve art does not necessarily evince a distinct cultural context or tradition. Naïve art is recognized, and often imitated, for its childlike simplicity and frankness. Paintings of this kind typically have a flat rendering style with a rudimentary expression of perspective. One particularly influential painter of "naïve art" was Henri Rousseau (1844–1910), a French Post-Impressionist who was discovered by Pablo Picasso. Naïve art is often seen as outsider art that is by someone without formal (or little) training or degree. While this was true before the twentieth century, there are now academies for naïve art. Naïve art is now a fully recognized art genre, represented in art galleries worldwide. Museums devoted to naïve art now exist in Kecskemét, Hungary; Riga, Latvia; Jaen, Spain; Rio de Janeiro, Brasil; Vicq France and Paris. Another term related to (but not completely synonymous with) naïve art is folk art. There also exist the terms "naïvism" and "primitivism" which are usually applied to professional painters working in the style of naïve art (like Paul Gauguin, Mikhail Larionov, Paul Klee). At all events, naive art can be regarded as having occupied an "official" position in the annals of twentieth-century art since - at the very latest - the publication of the Der Blaue Reiter, an almanac in 1912. Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, who brought out the almanac, presented 6 reproductions of paintings by le Douanier' Rousseau (Henri Rousseau), comparing them with other pictorial examples. However, most experts agree that the year that naive art was "discovered" was 1885, when the painter Paul Signac became aware of the talents of Henri Rousseau and set about organizing exhibitions of his work in a number of prestigious galleries. The Earth Group (Grupa Zemlja) were Croatian artists, architects and intellectuals active in Zagreb from 1929 to 1935. The group included the painters Krsto Hegedušić, Edo Kovačević, Omer Mujadžić, Kamilo Ružička, Ivan Tabaković, and Oton Postružnik, the sculptors Antun Augustinčić, Frano Kršinić, and the architect Drago Ibler. A term applied to Yugoslav (Croatian) naive painters working in or around the village of Hlebine, near the Hungarian border, from about 1930. Some of the best known naive artists are Dragan Gaži, Ivan Generalić, Josip Generalić, Krsto Hegedušić, Mijo Kovačić, Ivan Lacković-Croata, Franjo Mraz, Ivan Večenaj and Mirko Virius. 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