Félix Fénéon

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Félix Fénéon, around 1900
Félix Fénéon (signature) .jpg

Félix Fénéon (born June 22, 1861 in Turin , † February 29, 1944 in Châtenay-Malabry ( Hauts-de-Seine )) was a French anarchist , journalist , writer , art collector and art critic in Paris . He created the art term Neo-Impressionism in 1886 for the art style of an artist group around Georges Seurat , which he promoted extraordinarily.

life and work

Félix Vallotton: Portrait of Félix Fénéons , 1898

Félix Fénéon was born in Turin as the son of a traveling salesman. From 1881 to 1894 he was employed in the War Ministry. As early as 1884 he was fascinated by George Seurat's bathing scene in Asnières . From 1886 he became involved in the anarchist movement, took part in the publication of libertarian magazines such as "L'Endehors" and supported the intellectual group around Émile Zola in the Dreyfus affair . Fénéon was among the signatories of a petition calling for a revision of the misjudgment against Alfred Dreyfus .

Félix Fénéon, painted by Paul Signac in 1890.
Félix Vallotton : Félix Fénéon in the editorial office of La Revue blanche , 1896

In 1894 there was a bomb attack on the Foyot restaurant in Paris, for which Fénéon was held responsible with other defendants in the “Procès des trente” (Trial of Thirty) in August, but had to be acquitted at the end of the trial.

In the Parisian society of the fin de siècle he performed as a dandy , was a member of Stéphane Mallarmé's Tuesday society and a confidante of the late impressionists, editor of James Joyce and collector of African art.

In 1896 he took over as editor-in-chief of the literature and art magazine La Revue blanche . There he published texts by Oscar Wilde , André Gide and Paul Valéry . Fénéon continued his journalistic career at " Figaro " and then at "Matin" until the end of 1906. Then he gave up journalism and became artistic director of the Bernheim-Jeune gallery and, at the same time, literary director of the Éditions de la Sirène. Even before the Russian Revolution in 1917, Fénéon moved away from anarchist ideas and approached communist ideas .

Fénéon discovered or published works by authors including Alfred Jarry , Stéphane Mallarmé , Guillaume Apollinaire , Jules Laforgue and Arthur Rimbaud . As a painter, he made Georges Seurat known and campaigned for Camille Pissarro , Paul Signac , Kees van Dongen , Henri Matisse , Maurice Denis , Émile Compard and others.

His fondness for African art was mainly due to his early anti-colonialist attitude. His collection of African art includes 400 objects; In addition to small and medium-sized statues, masks and amulets and wooden reliefs from West Africa , he owned a selection of high-quality woven bobbins from the Ivory Coast . His commitment to the equality of all peoples and his interest in African culture was expressed as early as 1895 when he asked personalities like Jules Verne about the abolition of racial differences for La Revue blanche . In 1931 he took part in the counter-event ( The Truth About the Colonies ) organized by Louis Aragon and André Thirion to the French colonial exhibition at the Porte Dorée in Paris. He understood African art as l'art lointain; He viewed this distant art as a universal educational treasure, not primarily an ethnological asset.

Félix Fénéon died in 1944 at the age of 82 in Châtenay-Malabry, a town on the Parisian suburb .

His widow Fanny Goubeaux donated the Prix ​​Fénéon for literature and art in 1949 .

literature

  • Les Impressionnistes en 1886
  • Oeuvres , foreword by Jean Paulhan , Paris, Gallimard, 1948
  • Oeuvres plus que complètes , édition Joan U. Halperin, Librairie Droz, 1970
  • Nouvelles en trois lignes , éditions Macula, Paris, 1990 et Le Mercure de France (two volumes), Paris, 1997–1998
  • Correspondance de Fanny & Félix Fénéon avec Maximilien Luce , du Lérot, éditeur 2001
  • Petit supplément aux œuvres plus que complètes Volume 1. du Lérot, éditeur, 2003
  • Le Procès des Trente , Histoires littéraires & du Lérot, éditeur, 2004
  • Petit supplément aux œuvres plus que complètes Volume 2. du Lérot, éditeur, 2006
  • Correspondance de Stéphane Mallarmé et Félix Fénéon . du Lérot, éditeur, 2007
  • 1111 true stories . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt a. M. ( The Other Library, edited by HM Enzensberger) 1993

Exhibitions

  • 2020: Félix Fénéon. The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde - From Signac to Matisse and Beyond , MoMa New York
  • 2019 - 2020: Félix Fénéon - Les temps nouveaux , Musée de l´Orangerie, Paris
  • 2019: Félix Fénéon. Les arts lointains. Musée du Quai Branly, Paris

Web links

Commons : Félix Fénéon  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung: Flaneur der Ferneur. Retrieved July 11, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Price website , sorbonne.fr
  3. ^ Félix Fénéon: The Anarchist and the Avant-Garde — From Signac to Matisse and Beyond | MoMA. Retrieved July 11, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Fénéon, Félix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French anarchist, journalist and art critic
DATE OF BIRTH June 22, 1861
PLACE OF BIRTH Turin
DATE OF DEATH February 29, 1944
Place of death Châtenay-Malabry , Hauts-de-Seine department , France