André Dunoyer de Segonzac's Saint-Tropez
22 - 29 Juillet 2023
Born in 1884 in Boussy-Saint-Antoine, near Paris, Dunoyer de Segonzac began his artistic training in Paris in 1903. He attended the Académie de la Palette and the studios of Luc Olivier Merson and Jean-Paul Lorens.
From 1909, Dunoyer de Segonzac regularly took part in exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants, and exhibited at the Salon de la Section d'Or in October 1912 and at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. His paintings of the period show the influence of Cubism and, to a lesser extent, Expressionism. Mobilised in August 1914, he left Saint-Tropez to join the army corps in Fontainebleau and, during the First War, produced a series of drawings of the trenches. After the war, the engraver Jean Emile Laboureur introduced him to the technique of etching. This was the defining moment in Dunoyer de Segonzac's artistic output, and he never left printmaking until the end of his life: he created more than 1,600 prints.
Between the two wars, Dunoyer de Segonzac was recognised by the critics, along with André Derain and Henri Matisse, as one of the most important modern artists. In 1925, together with Moreau and André Villeboeuf, Dunoyer de Segonzac bought Charles Camoin's villa in Saint-Tropez, which he renamed Le Maquis. Not falling into the trap of the Mediterranean sun, he devoted himself to translating the rare moments of grey light or dark skies, expressing a timeless feeling and a melancholy atmosphere. Looking at Cézanne's work towards the end of his life, he turned more and more to watercolours. It was his watercolours that brought Dunoyer de Segonzac commercial success as well as officielle consecration when he was appointed curator of the Musée de L'Annonciade in Saint Tropez when it was created in 1955. He died in Paris in 1974.
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