Wednesday Mornings with Bea, KEES VAN DONGEN 1877-1968. THE BLUE-EYED FAUVE THE PAINTER OF WOMEN

Come and meet rakish Kees,
the wild one and the Jet Society one.
You will enjoy this ride!

One of the greatest colorists of the 20th Century,
the Dutch painter Kees Van Dongen
enjoyed all of life´s pleasures.

Best known as “The Painter of Women,” he painted them all! Street girls from Rotterdam, prostitutes from
Montmartre, shameless vixens of the Folies Bergères, and, as one French critic called them, those
“fashionable Paris high society neurotics!”

Countesses were flocking to his studio to be painted like prostitutes or “femmes fatales.” The Who´s Who of
Paris between the two World Wars were his models. He did indeed painted the “crème de la crème” of
International Society!

He was a sharp draughtman as well. He could assimilate anything he was shown, very quickly and with great ease.

His quest and thirst for success and glory, his desire to be a star, made him bit by bit abandon the Fauve
palette for a less strident, more feminine palette, except when he painted the eccentric Maria Casati!

Toward the end of his life, Van Dongen continued to paint for himself in his massive studio on the Left Bank
of Paris where once before, all of Paris and the world had come to visit and patronize his talents. He finally
left France and exiled himself in Monaco where he died in May 1968.

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