A leading founder of the Fauvist movement, Louis Valtat was an independent and versatile painter. Fauvist principles required a total liberation of local color in favor of palette of unmixed paint used straight from the tube, often applied with firm, even violent brushwork. Forms are simplified and flattened, giving precedence to a patterned, decorative surface. Although Valtat had painted in this manner for several years, it wasn't until his exhibition in the 1905 Salon d'Automne that the term ?Fauves,? meaning ?wild beasts,? came into use, coined by a prominent critic to describe many of the artists exhibiting that year, including Matisse, Vlaminck, Derain, Manguin, Dongen, Friesz, Puy and Valtat.
Selected Museum Collections:
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseilles; Museum of Modern Art, New York; The State Hermitage Museum, Saint-Petersburg; Musée de l?Annonciade, Saint-Tropez; Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art; Fondation Bemberg, Toulouse; Musée des Augustins, Toulouse; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Troyes; Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, FL