| Andre Derain took his first private lessons in painting in 1895. In 1898, he enrolled in the Academie Carriere, in Paris. He became a close friend with a fellow student there, Henri Matisse. A year later, Derain rented a studio with another young artist, Maurice de Vlaminck. In 1900, however, Derain was drafted for military service and spent the following four years in this capacity. The following year, 1905, was important both for Derain and the development of modern art. An exhibition was organized in Paris at the Salon dAutomne in which Derain, Matisse, Vlaminck and others were invited to show their recent paintings. The exhibition was promptly dubbed Cage aux Fauves (Cage of Wild Beasts) by a critic, and the famous movement of Fauvism was officially born.
Yet Derain was content with Fauvism for only a short period of time. In 1908 and 1910 he went on extensive trips with Picasso to both Avignon and Spain and became interested in Cubism but never fully accepted it. It was at this time as well that Derain became a major artist of the book. In 1909 he supplied the illustrations for Apollinaires first book of poetry, LEnchanteur pourissant, and illustrated a collection of poems by Max Jacob in 1912.
With the outbreak of World War One in 1914, Derain was again forced into service and remained in the army throughout the conflict, fighting in some of the bloodiest battles such as the Somme and Verdun. Upon his release in 1919, however, Derain had emerged as one of Frances most famous artists. He was immediately commissioned by Diaghilev to design for the ballet, Le Boutique fantasque, and from 1920 to 1924, four individual books were published about his art. Derains paintings, lithographs, etchings and woodcuts were now exhibited internationally in cities such as London, Berlin, Frankfurt and New York. In 1928 he was awarded the prestigious Carnegie Prize in the United States.
While the 1920s decade was for Derain the period of his greatest official recognition it was also for his art the era of his greatest change. Almost oblivious to past modernist triumphs Derain went to Italy in 1921 for the centenary celebrations of the art of Raphael. There he was deeply impressed with both High Renaissance painting and more directly classical sources such as the Fayum portraits and Roman mosaics which he studied at Pompeii and elsewhere. |
