Have it delivered hassle-freeBuyer protectionAll items curated by WhoppahDownload the Whoppah app here
Vintage painting "Portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse" by Pierre-Ernest Kohl, France 1931
Seller: Business seller€4,650Offer from €4,185
Item not as advertised, money backAll items are curated and 100% authenticHave it delivered hassle-free or pick it up yourselfShop only from Trusted Sellers
Business seller
Product description
Ó/L “Portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse” Pierre-Ernest Kohl, Expressionism, 1931 – France
Extraordinary expressionist work by the renowned Monegasque artist Pierre-Ernest Kohl (1897-1987). It is a portrait of Kiki de Montparnasse, in its original carved and gilded wooden frame. The composition focuses on the female figure of Kiki, presented with her characteristic features: eyes outlined with kohl, lips painted deep red and a short bowl pony. You can barely perceive what she wears, as she hides under a large fur coat that she used to wear, according to the stories of the artists who shared her life. Despite being a sweet portrait, especially noticeable in her idealized face, she appears showing one breast, which refers directly to the sexual debauchery of Kiki, the great muse of Montparnasse. It is a portrait captured from nature, through a synthetic language, with energetic and well-controlled strokes, which seeks above all to capture the volumetry and geometric play, while maintaining descriptive details that avoid the loss of realism. Thanks to the dispersed drawing and the thick lines of the brush strokes, a clear influence of the post-impressionist forms of great painters such as Paul Cézanne, Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard can be seen in this work. The gaze, perhaps melancholic, is lost to the left, as if observing something outside the canvas that escapes the viewer's knowledge.
On the banks of the Seine stands a small hill known as Montparnasse, which acquired great importance in the 19th century and, above all, in the first two decades of the 20th century. The most vocal artists settled in this neighborhood, far from traditions. Artists of all genres (painters, sculptors, writers) attracted by the promise of freedom and full personal fulfillment. Kiki, born Alice Ernestine Prinue (1901-1953), was the queen of that neighborhood. In the words of Ernest Hemingway “she was wonderful to look at. Her face being naturally pretty, she had turned it into a work of art. She had a prodigiously beautiful body and a pleasant voice.” As the great muse of so many artists, Kiki has come to symbolize everything that Montparnasse offered: strength and vulnerability, freedom and decadence.
Signed in the lower right area. The frame has a small accident in one corner that is easy to repair.
Author biography
Pierre Ernest Kohl (1897-1987) was a painter born on February 3, 1897 in Monaco, his grandfather was the founder of the famous Monte Carlo Casino. His father was a director of large hotels, born in Germany, of French maternal descent; and his mother, born Schneider, of English maternal descent. Pierre Kohl's early youth was a perpetual journey through the hotel resorts of his family; restless character that always accompanied him, since Kohl himself writes that he moved twenty-four times throughout his life. He made numerous and frequent trips throughout Europe.
From 1920 to 1938, Kohl lived in Paris. The most famous salons and galleries exhibited his works alongside those of Braque, Chagall, Cocteau, Dignimont, Derain, Foujita, Othon Friesz, Goerg, Gromaire, Kisling, Laprade, Lhote, Lurçat, Pascin, Picasso, Soutine, Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon , Modigliani, Vlaminck.
Few Swiss painters can be as proud of this as he is: of having participated in Paris in the fight for a freer, less conformist and less naturalistic society. Painting made by the great painters of the School of Paris during the important period for the history of art between the wars. Kohl was involved in this ferment and was one of the pioneers who revolutionized official and frozen art. If he did not want, like so many others, to take the step of abstract art to be fashionable, except in some rare attempts such as the stained glass windows he made for the baptistery of the church of Glovelier in the Jura.
Received in November 1952 at the Var Academy (1805). In 1956 he was nominated for the Knight's Cross of the Legion of Honor. One of his works is exhibited at the Center Pompidou in Paris.
Chronology
1909. Arrival in Lausanne. His parents became Swiss citizens in 1913 and acquired the bourgeoisie of Lausanne, where they ran the Ste-Luce hotel residence in Petit-Chêne for a long time.
1910. He carried out industrial studies in Lausanne.
1915. One-year internship as a designer-architect in the Monod & Laverrière from Lausanne, then studied Fine Arts at the Loup Academy in Lausanne.
1919. He married Marguerite Kendal-Bush, of Anglo-American origin, on September 19. He moves to Geneva, rue du Soleil Levant.
1920. He settles in Bern, on Gerechtigkeits gasse and, in 1923, on Junkerngasse.
1923. Painting works in Paris, he exhibits at the Salon des Indépendants, at the Salon des Tuileries, and at the Salon d'Automne. Individual exhibitions under contract at the CARMINE Gallery, 51 rue de Seine
Specifications
ConditionGoodHeight91 cmWidth70 cmDepth6 cm