Raoul Dufy

1877-1953

American Artist

Dufy was born in Le Havre, France. When he was 15 he enrolled at the local arts school. In 1900, the town of Le Havre awarded him a grant to study art in Paris. His interest in color began with the Impressionists. Dufy experimented with Cubism from 1907 on, utilizing flattened space and an emphasis on form. Unlike other leading Cubists, however, Dufy always used a bright palette throughout his career, while incorporating shallow space, angular shapes and flattened forms. Along with landscapes and the figure, he was captivated by the theme of windows. Dufy loved to paint the view through an open window, to the landscape or seascape beyond. He was interested in the relationship between indoor and outdoor views, and, by extension, interior and exterior worlds. By the end of his life, a new theme engrossed Dufy- the black freighter. He believed that black was, rather than the negation of color, the color of absolute light. While some of Dufy's contemporaries used black to outline shapes, he used it as a dominant element in the composition, foreshadowing the American Abstract Expressionists.