PALM BEACH, FLA.- Acquavella presents Masters of Modernism: From Gauguin to Warhol in Palm Beach. With works on view by Pierre Bonnard, Georges Braque, Paul Cézanne, Jean Dubuffet, Paul Gauguin, Alberto Giacometti, Fernand Léger, Brice Marden, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Édouard Vuillard, Andy Warhol, and Zao Wou-Ki, the selling exhibition features a range of Post-Impressionist, modern, and postwar masterworks.

Copying the objects which make up a still-life is nothing. What matters is to express the feelings they inspire in you, the emotion that the whole composition arouses, the harmonies between the different objects, and the specific nature of each of them, modified by its harmonies with the others. - Henri Matisse

As Nice was threatened by airstrike in 1943 during World War II, Henri Matisse was forced to seek refuge inland, moving to Villa Le Rêve on the outskirts of Vence, where he worked until 1948. As he had done in his Nice studios during the 1920s, Matisse transformed the space into a vibrant and resplendent oasis, adorned by his many colorful canvases, lush plants, and textiles, all illuminated by the bright southern light of the Mediterranean. Its splendor inspired a poetic energy in the still life paintings of this period.

In Vase d'anémones, a porcelain vase, an ink bottle, and a trio of ripe, colorful fruits rest upon a golden tablecloth draped across the table, whose edges seems to inexplicably merge into the surrounding space of the room. In the vessel, an unkempt yet charming bunch of anemones with twisted stems disperses outwards to rest against the walls of the porcelain vase. He leaves the interior of the vase unpainted, along with the space immediately surrounding each flower, achieving both increased luminosity and emphasis on his forms. The lines of his initial sketches are visible which lends an immediacy to the painting and composition. While the vase seems to sit just at the edge of the golden tablecloth, other objects seem to curiously hover in the purple void of the surrounding atmosphere.

Flooded with vibrant color, Vase d’anémones, 1946 is a brilliant example from the last chapter of Matisse’s accomplished career as a painter, completed before the artist abandoned his paintbrush for scissors to focus on his series of exuberant cutouts in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Exemplary of this final flourishing of Matisse’s painting, Vase d’anémones represents a culmination of his fully matured technique and expression of his appreciation of the beauty he found in his immediate surroundings.

It was in the late 1880s that Gauguin abandoned his Impressionistic tendencies and began his exploration of a new painterly style. In search of an “untamed” artistic existence, Gauguin sought to escape Parisian society, and in 1886 he visited the picturesque town of Pont-Aven in Brittany. After his first stay in Brittany, Gauguin spent time with Van Gogh and Arles and took extended trips to Panama and Martinique. As he searched for a so-called “primitive” civilization in which to live and work, his painterly style evolved beyond Impressionism towards Symbolism, seeking emotional depth and a spiritual experience in his work. By 1889, when he painted Still Life with a Small Dog, he had retreated to the seaside town of Le Pouldu in Brittany, searching for an “unspoilt” world in which to live and work.

Living in Le Pouldu, Gauguin completed numerous still lifes at this time, using the conventional subject matter to experiment with new, exaggerated hues and conveying depth through tones of color. An abundance of fresh fruit—apples, grapes, and perhaps some more exotic tropical fruits remembered from his travels—are painted in rich, vivid hues and scattered across a white tablecloth. Concerned with conveying feeling and a mood rather than representing strict reality, Gauguin achieves a sense of harmony, movement, and emotion. This approach shows his close study of Cézanne, a painter he admired immensely. In fact, one of Gauguin’s “most treasured possessions” was a still life painting by Cézanne, which he had bought in 1880 while working as a stockbroker in Paris. The painting, which he had brought with him to Brittany as he painted this series of still lifes, was so dear to him that he said, “I would give up my last shirt before the picture.” Today Gauguin's Cézanne belongs to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and its influence can be felt in paintings such as Still Life with a Small Dog.