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Kees Van Dongen

"The painters do not know what they are doing; they are half mad, and I am one."

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Notes of biography

Cornelis Van Dongen, known as Kees, is born in 1877 in Delfshaven (Holland). At the age of 12, he quits school to work in his father’s malt factory. Kees Van Dongen studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam from 1894 to 1896. He settles in Paris in 1897 and does several odd jobs in order to survive. From 1901, he creates cartoons for newspapers (Le Rire, L’Indiscret, and so on); he illustrates an issue of “L’assiette au Beurre” on prostitution.
At the beginning of the century, Van Dongen paints canvases in the post-impressionist style, depicting scenes from Parisian life. As of 1904, Kees Van Dongen exhibits regularly at the Salon des Indépendants and the Salon d’Automne. His first solo exhibition is mounted in Paris in 1904. From 1905, the artist creates paintings with intense, highly-contrasting colours, with defined contours that place them between Fauvism and Expressionism. He paints portraits with heavy features.
In 1908, the artist exhibits his work with the group Die Brücke in Dresden and, in 1910, at the Neue Secession in Munich. In the same year, the artist begins to elongate, little by little, the silhouettes of his subjects. He paints nudes that cause scandalous reactions. During the pre-war period, the artist will become the portrait painter of the fashionable social set; he will remain so for several decades. He produces his images by emphasising facial features, often in a cruel manner, exaggerating make-up to the point where faces become like artificial masks. The artist also paints landscapes characteristic of his style.
Kees Van Dongen obtains French nationality in 1929. He will experience a period of “purgatory” in France after World War II, having participated, in 1941, in a trip with French artists and writers in Germany.
Kees Van Dongen dies in Monte Carlo in 1968.

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.

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Complete work(s)

Complete work(s)
All the complete works

Bibliographic track and more

To read about the artist :
  • « Van Dongen », A. Malraux & B. Dorival, MAM de la Ville de Paris, 1967
  • « Van Dongen et le fauvisme », M. Kyriazi, Bibliothèque des Arts, Paris, 1971
  • « K. v. D. retrouvé, l’oeuvre sur papier », Institut Néerlandais, Paris, 1997
  • « K. v. D. » D. Marchesseau, Cat., Fondation P. Gianadda, Martigny, 2002
  • « Van Dongen », M. Vallès-Bled, Ed. Mazzotta, 2004
  • « Van Dongen : paparazzi des Années folles », Élisabeth Couturier, Historia, 2008
  • « Van Dongen », J.M. Bouhours et autres, Ed. Hazan, 2008
  • « Van Dongen », Anita Hopmans, cat. d'expo., Ed. Paris Musées, 2011
  • « Le Dernier Tango de Kees Van Dongen », F. Bott, Ed. Le Cherche Midi, 2014
  • « Van Dongen et le Bateau-Lavoir », Anita Hopmans et autres, Somogy Ed., 2018
To read from the artist :
  • « V. D. raconte la vie de Rembrandt...et de l’art », Flammarion, Paris, 1927
Website :
www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/dongen

More :


Art movements

+ FAUVISM / 1902-1907 / Charles Camoin, Auguste Chabaud, 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