Kees VAN DONGEN - Marcelle Leoni, 1959 - Original lithograph, hand-signed

Kees van Dongen : (1877-1968) is a french painter of dutch origins. He was born on January 26, 1877 in Delfshaven, in the Rotterdam suburbs (Netherlands) and died on May 28, 1968 in Monaco, aged 91 years old. In 1892, when he was 16 only, Kees van Dongen started studying paint at the Royal Accademy of Fine Arts in Rotterdam. From 1892 to 1897, he was often in the Red District in the harbour area. At that time, he painted numrous scences of sailors and prostitutes. D'inspiration anarchiste, il illustre en 1895 avec Jan Krulder l’édition hollandaise de l'ouvrage de Pierre Kropotkine intitulé "L’Anarchie". In 1897, he stayed in Paris for several months. He came back in December, 1899 to join Augusta Preitinger (Guus), he had met at the Accademy. They got married in 1901. In 1904, he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants with Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse. Soon, he started exhibiting his works in Paris, in particular at the controversial exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in 1905, where he exhibited along with Matisse, among others, where they were coined by the critics "les Fauves", which gave the name to a movement: le Fauvisme. After WWI, he settled close to Bois de Boulogne. He lived in the pink marble palace at Le Vésinet, owned by the marchioness Luisa Casati. He was decorated with the Legion of Honour in 1922, and was naturalized french in 1929. He briefly was a member of the german expresionnist movement Die Brücke.