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Lot Essay
Louis Marcoussis was born Lodwicz Casimir Ladislas Markus in Warsaw, Poland. Like Juan Gris, he earned his living in Paris, where he had been living since 1905, by making humorous drawings for the reviews La Vie Parisienne and L'Assiette au beurre. He painted in a Post-Impressionist style, but gave it up around 1907 to concentrate on his cartoons. He was renowned for his wit and he and his companion Marcelle Humbert (the pseudonym taken by Eva Gouel, also Polish-born) were a popular couple among the Bohemian set in Montmartre. They met Guillaume Apollinaire (a fellow Pole) and Georges Braques at the Cirque Médrano in 1910, and soon thereafter were introduced to Pablo Picasso and his mistress Fernande Olivier. Apollinaire persuaded Markus to Frenchify his name and he adopted the name Marcoussis. Picasso and Braque, who were then entering the 'analytical' phase of their cubism, encouraged Marcoussis to take up painting again, and he quickly adopted cubism.
Over the next two years Marcoussis's friendship with Picasso and Fernande became inscreasingly complicated. He was drawn to Fernande, and Picasso was attracted to Marcelle. The situation came to a head in May 1912 when Fernande left Picasso, and Picasso ran away with Marcelle (now Eva) to Céret (Eva sadly died of cancer two years later). Marcoussis, however, ended up the better, for not long thereafter he met Alice Halicka (another Polish émigré) in late 1912 and the two fell deeply in love. He and Alice were married on 13 July 1913 and honeymooned in Banyuls-sur-Mer, near the French border with Catalonia, where the artist painted Le bar du port.
The composition shows the buildings in the town set against the rugged hills that decline steeply into the sea, which is represented by the blue triangle at lower center. The pronounced use of diagonals gives the effect of the landscape being tilted to one side and viewed from a relatively high vantage point elsewhere in the hills. Marcoussis's cubist components consist mainly of overlapping rectangular and other polygonal forms, this, and the use of stencil-like lettering show his familiarity with the flatter and larger planar forms in the recent paintings and papiers collés of Picasso and Braque.
The carefully balanced rhythms in Marcoussis's cubist forms, however, suggest the presence of an overriding schematic design, and in this regard, Marcoussis demonstrates a stronger affinity with the cubism of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, and the other painters in the so-called Puteaux group centered around the brothers Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon. The Puteaux artists were interested in mathematical theories of proportion, the "golden section" of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. In fact, Marcoussis first exhibited his cubist paintings with the Section d'Or exhibition in October 1912. Organized by the Puteaux artists, this proved to be the last great group enterprise of the cubist movement.
La bar du port has been widely exhibited and is an important work from the years 1912-1914, which marked the ascendancy of the cubist movement in Europe prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Marcoussis painted only a few cubist works before he joined the French army when war was declared, and he did not resume painting until 1919 by which time cubism had entered its late mannerist phase. He was one of few contemporaries whom Picasso and Braque, the proud and often scornful pioneers of cubism, liked and respected. Marcoussis possessed a profound understanding of cubism, and was able to interpret and express these ideas in a small body of pre-war work that was more insightful and accomplished than that of many of his more prolific colleagues.
Over the next two years Marcoussis's friendship with Picasso and Fernande became inscreasingly complicated. He was drawn to Fernande, and Picasso was attracted to Marcelle. The situation came to a head in May 1912 when Fernande left Picasso, and Picasso ran away with Marcelle (now Eva) to Céret (Eva sadly died of cancer two years later). Marcoussis, however, ended up the better, for not long thereafter he met Alice Halicka (another Polish émigré) in late 1912 and the two fell deeply in love. He and Alice were married on 13 July 1913 and honeymooned in Banyuls-sur-Mer, near the French border with Catalonia, where the artist painted Le bar du port.
The composition shows the buildings in the town set against the rugged hills that decline steeply into the sea, which is represented by the blue triangle at lower center. The pronounced use of diagonals gives the effect of the landscape being tilted to one side and viewed from a relatively high vantage point elsewhere in the hills. Marcoussis's cubist components consist mainly of overlapping rectangular and other polygonal forms, this, and the use of stencil-like lettering show his familiarity with the flatter and larger planar forms in the recent paintings and papiers collés of Picasso and Braque.
The carefully balanced rhythms in Marcoussis's cubist forms, however, suggest the presence of an overriding schematic design, and in this regard, Marcoussis demonstrates a stronger affinity with the cubism of Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger, and the other painters in the so-called Puteaux group centered around the brothers Marcel Duchamp and Jacques Villon. The Puteaux artists were interested in mathematical theories of proportion, the "golden section" of the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid. In fact, Marcoussis first exhibited his cubist paintings with the Section d'Or exhibition in October 1912. Organized by the Puteaux artists, this proved to be the last great group enterprise of the cubist movement.
La bar du port has been widely exhibited and is an important work from the years 1912-1914, which marked the ascendancy of the cubist movement in Europe prior to the outbreak of the First World War. Marcoussis painted only a few cubist works before he joined the French army when war was declared, and he did not resume painting until 1919 by which time cubism had entered its late mannerist phase. He was one of few contemporaries whom Picasso and Braque, the proud and often scornful pioneers of cubism, liked and respected. Marcoussis possessed a profound understanding of cubism, and was able to interpret and express these ideas in a small body of pre-war work that was more insightful and accomplished than that of many of his more prolific colleagues.