Maurice Utrillo by Jeanine Warnod. Crown Publishers 1983

Maurice Utrillo by Jeanine Warnod. Crown Publishers 1983

hardcover with DJ 

95 pp

good condition

  Maurice Utrillo was born on December 25, 1883, of an unknown father. At the time, his eighteen-year-old mother - later to become a master painter herself - was working as a model for Puvis de Chavannes, Renoir, and Toulouse-Lautrec. She would remain at the center of his problematic and painful life. Beset by a vicious circle of frustrated love and alcoholism, this lonely and secretive man could express himself only in his paintings. As she did in her book on Suzanne Valadon, Jeanine Warnod writes with sympathy and warmth about Valadon's son. She strips Utrillo of his melodramatic image and reveals the real character of this sensitive artist, one of the greatest landscape painters of our century. An instinctive artist - a painter of feelings - Utrillo does not fit into any one school of painting. Warnod covers his entire creative career, focusing particularly on the years between 1906 and 1914, often called his << White Period, >> when he produced some of his most extraordinary works: views of churches, of the restaurant « Le Lapin Agile, » and of the << Moulin de la Galette.» She explores what was exceptional in his art; clarifies many preconceived ideas, enigmas, and paradoxes surrounding his tragic life; and re-creates for us the emotional, social, and artistic atmosphere of Utrillo's times.