You want to be alarmed for any new work by this artist ? Enter your email address to get an alarm
Alfred Reth
"I do not believe that art can progress. Man simply need constant change."
+ Stamp
Stamp by Alfred Reth
fictional stamp
The publication of a postal stamp is often a homage paid by a nation to a place, an event, a remarkable cause or a character which count. The painters and other artists do not escape from this rule. Some are however "forgotten" of postal art. Here, gathered below (French or foreign), emitted stamps (206) or simple studies of stamp (224) in homage to the artists represented on our website. The first French stamp was emitted in 1849, England preceded us by ten years. There is often a share of voyage in this small form of shape paper. The stamp circulates, sails, flies away, it makes dream, then dream a little. M.C.
When the stamp is really emitted, the artist name is preceded of an asterisk (*). It is certain that we do not know each stamp emitted for such or such artist; do not hesitate with us to make known them!
Discover all the stamps
+ Autograph
Reproduction of letter autograph
This document is not for sale
+ A tribute to...
See all the tribute pages...
A tribute to Alfred Reth
Sorry this section is only available in french for now.
« En septembre 1966, un des plus purs artistes de notre époque s'éteint en plein Paris, avant qu'un seul musée ait présenté l'ensemble de ses travaux », constate Waldemar George, ami de l’artiste et critique d’art, dans son oraison funèbre. Alfred Reth meurt le 15 septembre 1966 à Paris, dans son atelier. Il est enterré deux jours plus tard au cimetière Montparnasse (1ère Division). En hommage, une simple pensée (« Forget me not » en anglais).
"Je ne crois pas que les racines de l'art varient beaucoup dans le temps." - Alfred Reth
"Je suis d'avis que l'art n'est pas en compétition avec la nature par l'atmosphère, la psychologie, la sensation, mais que l'affaire de l'art est d'exprimer dans l'espace les représentations que l'esprit de l'homme a des choses." - Alfred Reth
"Reth peut être considéré comme un des plus sérieux et des plus "authentiques" précurseurs du mouvement actuel vers l'abstraction." - Jacques Lassaigne (Critique d’art, 1948)
"Avec sa peinture, Reth met fin au dilemme entre le figuratif et le non-figuratif, entre l'abstrait et le tachisme." - Pierre Cabanne (Critique d'art, 1968)
"Il est sur le chemin de Delaunay, pour lui la couleur n'est pas un simple élément distinctif des choses mais un élément constitutif, une forme en soi, une entité indépendante qui ne nécessite pas d'être complétée." - Csaba Sik (Critique d’art)
"Le silence parisien autour de Mr Reth cache un mystère car, ou il fut et reste un parangon de modestie dédaigneux de bruit et de gloire, ou il subit une injustice dont les raison nous échappent." - M. Mermillon (Journaliste, 1949)
Notes of biography
Alfred Reth, Alfred Roth-his real name, was born in 1884 in Budapest (Hungary). Son of a doctor, he moved to Paris in 1905, after he had travelled a lot in Italy. Living in Montparnasse, he attended the academy Jacques Emile Blanche, where he studying drawing. During a second trip to Italy, Alfred Reth studied a few months to the Beaux-Arts in Florence.
He came back to Paris in 1907. The Cubist influence was perceptible in his works, portraits, still lives, landscapes. When he discovered the hindu art in museums, Reth decided to study it scientifically in 1908. Thus he tried to applied mystical principles to his work. A very important exhibition was devoted to him to the Gallery Der Sturm in Berlin in 1913. He exhibited more than 80 cubist paintings and drawings; his originality in Cubism has been to seek “a balance between masses together”.
With the declaration of war in 1914, Alfred Reth enlisted in the French army and was quickly reformed.
From 1910, the artist participated in collectives exhibitions in France and abroad, including yearly Parisian Salons (Salon d'Automne, the Salon des Independants, Salon des Tuileries, etc…). He was a founding member of the Abstraction-Creation Fair and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles. Many Parisian galleries exhibited his work (Denise Rene Gallery, Galerie Berthe Weill…).
During and after the First World War, Alfred Reth returned to a more realistic painting. He probably stopped painting a few years until 1920. In 1920, Reth renewed with the most daring of his artistic past, then leading to solutions that were similar to Delaunay’s chromatic circles.
Gradually, his work evolved toward a whole abstraction, without any concern for representation, association or equivalent.
Alfred Reth died in Paris on September 15th, 1966, after an exhibition he got in Chicago.
Artists on display
The art and the artists display: proclamations, galleries, museums, personal or collective exhibitions. On walls or in shop windows, wise or rebels, posters warn, argue, show. Some were specially conceived by an artist for such or such event, other, colder, have only the letter.
Some were created in lithographic technic, most are simple offset reproductions. They are many those who like collecting these rectangles of paper, monochrome or in games of colours, in matt paper or brilliant, with many words or almost dumb.
We are happy also to be able to greet, by this pages, mythical galleries as those of Denise René, Louis Carré, Claude Bernard, Berheim Jeune, Maeght, Pierre Loeb and others.
Complete work(s)
Complete work(s)
*« Alfred Reth », A. Boutin, Ed. Marianne Le Morvan, à paraître, 2018 All the complete worksBibliographic track and more
To read about the artist :
- « Alfred Reth », Denys Suttan, cat., Ed. Galerie Gimpel Fils, Londres, 1959
- « Du cubisme à nos jours », cat. d'expo. coll., Ed. Musée de St Étienne, 1963
- « Les artistes français : ... », collectif, in Journal de l'amateur d'Art, 1983
- « Commémoration du centenaire d'A. R. », Ed. Mus. Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi, 1984
- « Tableaux d’A. Reth », catalogue de vente Ader-Picard-Tajan, 1991
- « L’école de Paris 1904-1929 », cat., M. A. M. de la ville de Paris, 2000
- « L’art abstrait et la galerie Denise René », Ed. Cercle d’Art, 2001
- « Du cubisme à l’abstraction », J. Cserba & C. Kopeczky, Maklary Artworks, 2003
- « Avant-garde Hongroise », Ed. le Minotaure / Galerie Antoine Laurentin, 2004
- « Alfred Reth », Ed. le Minotaure / Galerie Antoine Laurentin, 2007
To read from the artist :
- « Meine Ausstellung », Der Sturm, 27 février 1913
Website :
No website dedicated to the artist.More :
+ Stamp
Stamp by Alfred Reth
fictional stamp
The publication of a postal stamp is often a homage paid by a nation to a place, an event, a remarkable cause or a character which count. The painters and other artists do not escape from this rule. Some are however "forgotten" of postal art. Here, gathered below (French or foreign), emitted stamps (206) or simple studies of stamp (224) in homage to the artists represented on our website. The first French stamp was emitted in 1849, England preceded us by ten years. There is often a share of voyage in this small form of shape paper. The stamp circulates, sails, flies away, it makes dream, then dream a little. M.C.
When the stamp is really emitted, the artist name is preceded of an asterisk (*). It is certain that we do not know each stamp emitted for such or such artist; do not hesitate with us to make known them!
Discover all the stamps
+ Autograph
Reproduction of letter autograph
This document is not for sale
+ A tribute to...
See all the tribute pages...
A tribute to Alfred Reth
Sorry this section is only available in french for now.
« En septembre 1966, un des plus purs artistes de notre époque s'éteint en plein Paris, avant qu'un seul musée ait présenté l'ensemble de ses travaux », constate Waldemar George, ami de l’artiste et critique d’art, dans son oraison funèbre. Alfred Reth meurt le 15 septembre 1966 à Paris, dans son atelier. Il est enterré deux jours plus tard au cimetière Montparnasse (1ère Division). En hommage, une simple pensée (« Forget me not » en anglais).
"Je ne crois pas que les racines de l'art varient beaucoup dans le temps." - Alfred Reth
"Je suis d'avis que l'art n'est pas en compétition avec la nature par l'atmosphère, la psychologie, la sensation, mais que l'affaire de l'art est d'exprimer dans l'espace les représentations que l'esprit de l'homme a des choses." - Alfred Reth
"Reth peut être considéré comme un des plus sérieux et des plus "authentiques" précurseurs du mouvement actuel vers l'abstraction." - Jacques Lassaigne (Critique d’art, 1948)
"Avec sa peinture, Reth met fin au dilemme entre le figuratif et le non-figuratif, entre l'abstrait et le tachisme." - Pierre Cabanne (Critique d'art, 1968)
"Il est sur le chemin de Delaunay, pour lui la couleur n'est pas un simple élément distinctif des choses mais un élément constitutif, une forme en soi, une entité indépendante qui ne nécessite pas d'être complétée." - Csaba Sik (Critique d’art)
"Le silence parisien autour de Mr Reth cache un mystère car, ou il fut et reste un parangon de modestie dédaigneux de bruit et de gloire, ou il subit une injustice dont les raison nous échappent." - M. Mermillon (Journaliste, 1949)
Art movements
+ ABSTRACTION-CREATION / 1931-1938 / Etienne Béothy, Frantisek Kupka, Piet Mondrian, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Georges Vantongerloo, etc.
+ NEW REALITIES / 1946-1956 / Etienne Béothy, Marcelle Cahn, etc.
All art movements
See & discover
Beyond works currently in stock, it seemed to me useful to combine business with pleasure by letting you discover others works by artists in my gallery. These artworks, now sold or removed from our website, have been in our stock in the past.
These pages will undoubtedly make it possible for some of you to associate an image with its title or the other way round, for others it will be a good time to discover more on such and such artist. For the sake of confidentiality – the pieces being no longer available – we won't display neither their numbering or their price. For whatever reason, make sure to visit this amazing art database with to date 6441 online works just for your pleasure! Michelle Champetier
See & discover