ALBERT LEON GLEIZES (France, 1881 - 1953).
Untitled, 1928.
Gouache on lithographic base on paper.
Work published in the artist's catalogue raisonné (Varichon, 1273).
Signed and dated in the lower right corner.
Size: 49.5 x 41.5 cm; 79.5 x 71 cm (frame).
During his early years, Gleizes worked in his father's industrial design studio in Paris. Finally, after completing his secondary education, he spent four years in the army and then began his career as a painter, initially painting landscapes. His first works are in the Impressionist style, with works such as "La Seine à Asnières", exhibited at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1902. The following year he took part in the first Salon d'Automne in Paris, and soon came into contact with Fernand Léger, Robert Delaunay, Jean Metzinger and Heri Le Fauconnier. In 1910 he joined Cubism, of which he was one of the first and most important theoreticians, together with Metzinger. That same year he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. Three years later he took part in the group exhibition at the Armory Show in New York. During the war he re-enlisted in the army, and after the war he moved to New York. He also travelled to Barcelona and Bermuda, and in 1916 held his first solo exhibition at the Galerías Dalmau in Barcelona. Two years later he was fully committed to the search for spiritual values, which was reflected in both his painting and his texts. In 1927 he founded in Sablons Moly-Sabata, a utopian community of artists and craftsmen, in a way a continuation of the Abbaye de Créteil which he had formed, together with other artists and writers, on the outskirts of Paris in 1906. In 1931, Gleizes participated in the Abstraction-Création committee which acted as a forum for international non-figurative art. By then, his work reflected the strengthening of his religious convictions and in 1932, in his book "La Forme et l'histoire" he examined Celtic, Romanesque and Oriental art. During these years he gave lectures in Poland and Germany, and was commissioned to paint murals for the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1937. Almost a decade later, between 1949 and 1950, he worked on illustrations for Blaise Pascal's book "Pensées sur l'homme et Dieu". In 1951 Gleizes was appointed to the jury of the Prix de Rome, and the French government awarded him the Legion of Honour. Considered a great renovator of religious art, in 1951 he produced his last great work, a fresco entitled "Eucharist", which he painted for the Jesuit chapel in Chantilly. Albert Gleizes is currently represented in the Guggenheim Museums in Venice and New York, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, the MoMA and the Metropolitan in New York, the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo, the Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Tate Gallery and the Thyssen-Bornemisza, among other collections around the world.