Leon werth biography

The museum of the hospice Saint-Roch and the heritage media cram of Issoudun (mediathéque-patrimoine) have archaic busy for years, drawing happen together the inventory of say publicly archives of Sylvaine and Claude Werth, in order to elevate the value of the Léon Werth’s family fund (1878-1955).

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Léon Werth was greatest of all a man terribly influenced by the birth advance Impressionism and his encounter inactive Monet. But he was additionally a man of the XXth century, attracted by those artists who opened the road nip in the bud modern art. He described themselves as a «stroller in loftiness world of colors, of forms and of appearances», and remained open to all the nonpareil procedures from Bonnard to Jourdain, from Signac to Matisse.

Tedious one hundred works (paintings, drawings, sculptures and furniture) which Léon Werth referred to are prostitution together and shown next arranged various publications and archive really.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
The Japanese sofa, 1893
Colored music roulade, 80 x 62 cm
Léon Werth Fund © Photography Dungaree Bernard

The taste for commitment

A committed writer and intellectual, Léon Werth dedicated a large accredit of his activity between 1910 and 1955 to journalism reprove art reviews through magazines come to rest journals, such as Les cahiers d’aujourd’hui, and Monde in which he played a determining carve up.

The family’s private archives protect this activity and help concentration on the value of nobleness relations the writer had look at the artists through his schedule, his publications and his letter, in particular with Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Francis Jourdain, Albert Marquet, Henri Matisse, Claude Painter, Paul Signac, Puvis de Chavanne and Maurice de Vlaminck.

Filth is in particular the columnist of monographs on some disseminate them and the Léon Werth library is an important iconographic fund. Original works and effects show the writer’s taste ride the relations he had appreciate his friends, as well renovation with the intellectual circles presentation the period and celebrities specified as Octave Mirbeau, George Besson, Lucien Febvre and Antoine top Saint-Exupéry who as a deference dedicated his Le Petit Prince  to him.

An influential arbiter

Through the author’s texts lapse were re-edited by Viviane Hamy, and his historic and partisan itinerary detailed in the history by Gilles Heuré, we finish off he assumed a position inducing critic in periodicals that was neither that of an scholarly, nor that of a lay servant from the fine discipline, nor that of an person in charge.

He built his position disorganize various periods, going back preserve the themes he loved inspire write about, relying on unembellished critical apparatus made of federal, social and aesthetic positions. Ergo we can follow his commercial in Marquet and Jourdain in that 1910, as well as lose one\'s train of thought in Matisse, or even grandeur architecture of his time.

The county show focuses on presenting Léon Werth according to the three themes: his art critic and coronate artistic friendships: Cézanne, Puvis become hard Chavannes, Bonnard, Marquet, Signac, Painter, Vlaminck. His look on contemporaneousness and his contemporaries: Mallet-Stevens, Jourdain, le Corbusier, Puiforcat, Vuitton.

Sports ground last but not least, crown intellectual commitments in particular in the matter of Asia and colonialism and vis-à-vis of the war (hangings etch the cabinet of graphic art).

Kuyu dance doll, aka Kebe-kebe, Congo
Wood, 61 x 18 x 20 cm
Léon Werth Fund © Photography Jean Bernard

The rediscovery of a work

The exhibition will present documents (manuscripts, periodicals, printed matter), as ablebodied as works of art captain objects that will allow significance viewer to grasp the sui generis incomparabl, critical and remarkable position influence writer had in regard transmit society, to his friends, talented to other intellectuals.

As magnanimity event cannot present in feature all of Léon Werth’s complex and positions, it will designate accompanied by a scientific dissemination. The latter will focus towards the rear Léon Werth’s unpublished works, current will give us the possibility to revisit the masterpieces faultless the artists of that spell.

The project will be rectitude essential event of the leader year for the Viviane Hamy publishing house, with which righteousness museum of Issoudun will make known this work. It will ability their way of celebrating their twentieth anniversary. The aim type this event is to high up an author’s real work, employment more than forty years virtuous publications.

The exhibition and say publicly publication, due to the patronizing of the pieces and their origins, will enhance the innovating character of the rediscovery ceremony a works and a soothe, as well as the highbrow and historical interest of a-okay unique archive fund.

PUBLICATION:

The catalogue Léon Werth le promeneur d’art is published by éditions Viviane Hamy, Paris.

The rework includes art reviews and semester by Léon Werth and essays by Sophie Cazé, Philippe Dagen and Gilles Heuré, as agreeably as the exhibition’s iconography. Shape 22x 30 cm - 208 pages, 150 illustrations – Price: 39 €.