Guest post by Madeline Bates, curatorial intern at the Georgia Museum of Art:
Cinq Peintres Refusés
par le Jury du Salon
Paris, Galerie Marck,
November 3–15, 1928
Before my first semester
as an intern of the Georgia Museum of Art’s Pierre Daura Center for European
Art, I had never heard of Pierre Daura, an artist about whom very little has
been published despite his lifelong artistic career and interactions with some
of the major figures of European modernism, like Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. To learn more about the artist, I turned to the Pierre Daura Archive located in the museum’s Study Center for the Humanities.
While perusing the archive,
filled with letters, newspapers, photos and similar ephemera, my interest was
piqued by a Parisian exhibition in which Daura took part called the Cinq
Peintres Refusés par le Jury du Salon, which ran concurrently with the
November 1928 Salon d’Automne. This annual exhibition, established in
1903, was an important Parisian showcase for the work of modern avant-garde
artists. A group of artists, including Henri Matisse, founded the
exhibition in an act of creative opposition to the exclusivity of the Salon of
the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture; the traditionally
conservative institution was not accepting of the innovations of modernism. In
October of 1928, Daura and four artists with whom he worked in Paris submitted
works of art that were subsequently rejected by the jury of the Salon
d’Automne. The Cinq Refusés exhibition was quickly conceived and
shown at the Galerie Marck in Paris. My interest in the Cinq Refusés largely sprung from the fact that
the formation of the exhibition, much like the Salon d’Automne, was a
response to the subjective hierarchy of fine art established via the Salons,
the major artistic exhibition spaces of the period.
[Five painters rejected by
the jury of the Salon d’Automne exhibit their “condemned” paintings and a few
others. When a violent retrograde movement manifests itself, it is interesting—perhaps
prudent—to know what trends contradict it. Here, so many among
others, are five Parisian painters singled out by the flattering rejection of the
jury: Torres-Garcia, Uruguayan; Aberdam, Polish; Engel-Rozier, Belgian; Daura,
Catalan; Jean Hélion, French.][1]
Photo of the artists
printed in Blanco y Negro, Madrid, December 9, 1928.
From left to right:
Engel-Rozier, Helion, Torres-García, Daura, and Aberdam.
This international group of Cinq Refusés artists included Daura, from the Catalan region of northern Spain; Joaquín Torres-García of Uruguay, who organized the exhibition; Ernest Engel-Rozier, also known as Engel-Pak, of Belgium; Alfred Aberdam, of Poland; and Jean Hélion of France. Each painter worked in idiosyncratic modern modes, representing very different subjects and styles. Unfortunately, because only one or two photos of the exhibition survive, today’s knowledge of the exhibition content largely derives from critical commentary. Along the same lines, it appears that the planning of the exhibition took place in person, as there are no letters from this time between Daura and the other peintres refusés present in the Daura archive.[2] Daura’s personal diary from 1928, however, extensively recounts the days during this period and thus provides unique insight into the exhibition process.
By its twenty-fifth year,
the 1928 Salon d’Automne had grown virtually to the scale of the Royal
Salon, exhibiting more than 2,500 paintings. Critics reported that the Salon’s
jury selection must have been arbitrary, for the work of Daura and his comrades
was no worse—and in many cases, more interesting or better executed—than
the Salon’s accepted works of art. Perhaps this was the case, as Daura’s
paintings had been accepted for the Salon d’Automne in 1922 and 1926.
Interestingly, in 1928, Pierre Daura secretly submitted a painting by Louise
Daura, his bride-to-be and a fellow visual artist; her work was accepted by the
Salon that year, and Pierre describes the occasion that Louise received her
acceptance letter with enthusiasm in his diary.
Although the Cinq
Refusés have received relatively little attention in art historical studies
over the years, there was a great deal of contemporary critical acclaim in
France and Spain, even reaching as far as America. Writers described the show
with colorful language and varying degrees of compassion for the artists
rejected by the Salon; some columnists embraced the show as a cheeky but
well-purposed response, while others mocked and belittled the artists as
failures. Many writers suggested, in reference to the formation of the Salon
d’Automne, that with the Cinq Refusés, Parisian history was
repeating itself.
One contemporary Parisian
review, published under the penname Nephtalie, speaks of the juried salon as a
“dying institution” and expresses support for the Cinq Refusés creative
mission:
If it is a battle to
fight, I say immediately to these five men that I am by their side, because it really seems to me too that all Salons they force-feed us are really too formal
and dying. Let those who have talent get up and move; we will be with them![3]
I found that Spanish
publications gave the work of the artists more attention than did French newspapers, which more often provided only exhibition announcements or a critique of the
Salon’s selection methods rather than reviews of the show’s artistic
content. English translations of most of these articles, particularly those in
Catalan, have never been published. Across Spanish and French papers alike, Daura received consistent praise for his still life paintings featured in the exhibition. I was delighted
to find that Daura’s diary includes a rough sketch of the very still life Daura would later send to the Salon d’Automne and show in
the Cinq Refusés exhibition.
A sketch of a natura
muerta scene from Daura’s diary, located in the Pierre Daura Archive, from
August 1928.
Daura’s otherwise untitled
Natura Muerta, completed by October 1928, now in a private collection.
La Publicitat de
Barcelona, a Catalan newspaper, presented
an especially interesting review of the exhibition. The article, entitled “Els
cinc refusats de Saló de Tardor de Paris,” gives each artist careful
consideration and provides extensive commentary on the role of the show within
the scope of the changing nature of exhibition spaces. Concerning Daura’s Naturas
Muertas, the author comments: "The great value of the Catalan
Daura’s canvases lie particularly in their finesse and subtlety. This artist
painted unassuming still-lifes and landscapes in an agile and nuanced
manner.”
The exhibition of the Cinq
Refusés, which reached its eighty-seventh anniversary in November 2015,
represents a pivotal moment in the history of these artists’ careers. Daura’s
close association with Torres-García—a lifelong friendship that began in 1926
when, connected by a mutual friend, Daura organized Torres-García first Parisian art show—would lead to
his relatively short-lived experiments with abstract constructionism and his
involvement in the international exhibition group Cercle et Carré. This
show was particularly formative for Torres-García: the artist received
significant recognition in the press for his organizing role, the first in a
long course of gathering together international groups of artists, such as Cercle
et Carré and its South American counterpart, Círculo y Cuadrado.
Furthermore, scholars have long said that Cinq Refusés exhibition was where
Torres-García first met the Dutch artist Theo van Doesburg, a founder of De
Stijl who would later oppose the ideals of Cercle et Carré with his own group, Art Concret.
In my research for this blog post, I came across a letter written by
Torres-García that indicates he met van Doesburg at least six months prior to
this exhibition; the letter, then, raises important questions for this period
in Torres-García’s career. For the artists the exhibition brought together and
its juxtaposition to the Salon d’Automne as well as the lingering
questions surrounding it, the Cinq Peintres Refusés par le Jury du Salon remains
a fascinating moment in history deserving of further scholarly examination.
[Cinq Peintres Refusés par
le jury du salon d’automne exposent leurs toiles “condamnées” et quelques
autres. Au moment où se manifeste un violent mouvement retrograde, il est
intéressant—peut-être prudent—de connaitre quelles tendances le contredisent.
Voici parmi tant d’autres, 5 peintres parisiens désignés par le refus flatteur
du jury: Torrès-Garcia: Uruguayen; Aberdam: Polonais; Engel-Rozier: Belge;
Daura: Catalan; Jean Hélion: Français.”]
The latest letter in 1928 from Torres-García to Daura dates to May 27; the next is not until May 1929. There are no letters in the museum’s archive between Daura and Engel-Rozier or Hélion during this time, or any between Daura and Aberdam at all.
Published in Adam (44 rue de Bruxelles), Paris, November 16 1928: Si c’est une bataille à livrer, je dis tout de suite à ces cinq hommes que je suis à leurs côtes, car il me semble vraiment à moi aussi, que tous les Salons dont on nous gave sont vraiment trop officiels et mourants. Que ceux qui ont du talent se lèvent et bougent, nous serons avec eux!
Published November 23,
1928: Es per la finesa i la subtilesa que valen sobretot les teles del
català Daura. Aquest artista ha pintat natures mortes i paisatges infinitament
senzills, d’una manera àgil i matisada. I am deeply grateful to Dr.
Stephen Ramos and Nuria Jaumot-Pascual for the translation from Catalan.
