A major retrospective of the Dutch artist Kees van Dongen at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts brings together some 200 works, including paintings, drawings, prints and archival documents.
Van Dongen, a member of the group of artists known as the Fauves, played an influential role in early 20th-century art.
He was the only portraitist among the Fauves, who were known for their use of strong colours. His “caustic, urban, scandalous art is very different from the landscape Fauvism that is generally associated with the movement,” the museum says.
The exhibition includes “arresting paintings of nudes and flirtatious women,” works that reflect themes of exoticism, spectacle and orientalism, says the museum.
The show also includes portraits of celebrated personalities of the Roaring ’20s.
Van Dongen, born in 1877, participated in the 1905 Salon d’automne exhibition in Paris that established Fauvism as a new movement in art. He died in 1968.
“Van Dongen, Painting the Town Fauve” — organized by the Montreal museum and the Nouveau Musee National de Monaco — opened Jan. 22 and runs to April 19. Works have been loaned to the exhibition by various public and private collections.
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For more information, visit mmfa.qc.ca.
