Baterbys Art Auction Gallery - Bios

Raoul Dufy
(1877-1953) Raoul Dufy was born in Le Havre, Normandy to a family of nine. When he was 18, he enrolled at Le Havre École des Beaux-Arts to study art. In 1900 after a year of military service, Raoul won a scholarship enabling him to attend the École Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he met Georges Braque. The impressionist landscapes by Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro greatly influenced Dufy’s work. After seeing Henri Matisse’s exhibition Luxe at the Salon des Indépendants in 1905, Dufy became interested in Fauvism. In 1920 after experimenting with Fauvism and Cubism, Dufy developed his own distinctive approach involving skeletal structures arranged in a diminished perspective. In his thirties, Dufy made a living by designing fabrics, tapestries, ceramic designs and creating book illustrations. Most notable is his fabric design work for Paul Poiret. By 1925, his reputation solidly established, he was commissioned to paint murals for many French public buildings. In 1938, Dufy completed one of the largest paintings ever done, a huge and immensely popular epic to electricity, the fresco La Fée Electricité for the Exposition Internationale in Paris.