Camoin dans sa lumière

Charles Camoin was born in 1879 in industrial-era Marseille, a city mainly turned towards the French colonial empire.Camoin belongs to a generation of artists living at the turn of the 19th century, in a time of sweeping technical, philosophical and artistic change.He was very close to Matisse, Manguin and Marquet, whom he met at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. Camoin is associated with the Fauves and is the only Fauvist painter who had close links with Cézanne. It is said that Camoin was the most Cézanne-like of Fauvist painters. We still have a large collection of letters exchanged by the two men. As Matisse said later: “I learnt a lot of things [about Cézanne] through Camoin…”Contrary to Cézanne, Charles Camoin was an artist whose work became rapidly known in Europe, especially in Germany, where it came to the attention of avant-garde painters such as Macke and Kirchner. From 1907, his paintings were shown and discussed in modern art exhibitions in Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne and Munich and the letters he received from Cézanne were translated in the German-speaking press.

In this exhibition, the visitor explores the various milestones on the path of art history and follows in Camoin’s footprints. Visitors discover the works of Camoin from his time at the Gustave Moreau workshop and with the Matisse group to his meeting with Cézanne, his Fauvist years, his relationship with the artist Emilie Charmy and his stay in Morocco with Matisse with his contrasted, soft, shiny and shimmering vision of the Mediterranean.The exhibition features more than 60 works by these artists, some of which will be shown for the first time.

Above: Charles Camoin Port de Marseille 1904