Gustav-Adolf Mossa

Gustav-Adolf Mossa (born January 28, 1883 in Nice , † May 25, 1971 there ) was a French painter of symbolism . He was the son of the painter Alexis Mossa , who designed many posters for the Nice Carnival and greatly influenced his son's career.

Gustav-Adolf Mossa was a belated symbolist and received suggestions from Gustave Moreau , Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer , Edgar Maxence or Émile-René Ménard . He was also driven by literary works, such as those of Stéphane Mallarmé , Charles Baudelaire , Joris-Karl Huysmans , masters of the Quattrocento , the Pre-Raphaelites and artists of the Art Nouveau played a major role in the development of Mossa. He made the most important works by 1918. Most of his symbolist images were only discovered after his death.

Life

Gustav-Adolf Mossa was born to the Italian Marguerite Alfier and the French painter Alexis Mossa. He became interested in painting from an early age. One of his father's pictures shows him as a nine-year-old painting. His father, who had worked at the Nice Carnival since 1873, became his teacher. Until 1900 Gustav-Adolf studied at the College of Fine Arts in Nice; there he made friends with Art Nouveau . At the same time, his father taught him the art of landscape painting (watercolors) around Nice and in the hinterland.

From 1900, after attending the Paris World Exhibition in 1900 , Mossa became a symbolist. He left college and devoted himself to writing plays and poems.

In 1901 Mossa created his first symbolist work: Salomé ou prologue du Christianisme . At the same time he accompanied his father several times to Italy , where he visited Genoa , Pisa , Siena and especially Florence . He followed in his father's footsteps and made his first works for the Nice Carnival. At the end of 1902 he returned to Nice, where he took part in an artistic competition as part of the Karnvelas. In 1903 he traveled again with his father to Mantua , Padua and Venice .

she
Gustav Adolf Mossa , 1905
Oil and gilding on canvas
80 × 63 cm
Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nice Link to the picture (please note copyrights )

The period between 1904 and 1911 marked a particularly fruitful work: symbolism painting, carnival scenes, watercolor drawings of landscapes, poems, plays.

In 1908 he married Charlotte-Andrée Naudin. In 1911 he was successful on the occasion of an exhibition at the Georges Petit gallery in Paris . Then he discovered old Dutch painting and left symbolism. During 1913 he held several exhibitions in Nice and Paris that were inspired by the music of Robert Schumann. During the First World War he was drafted in 1914 and seriously wounded. Based on this experience, the work Les tristes heures de la guerre was created in 1916 .

His marriage failed in 1918 and his mother died the following year. Mossa continued his work with less intensity, from then on painted landscapes and illustrations and was active as a writer. In 1925 he married Lucrèce Roux, she died in 1955.

After the death of his father (1926) he succeeded him as curator at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice . After the death of his second wife, he married Marie-Marcelle Butteli, whom he called "Violette".

After his death, his oeuvre of symbolism was rediscovered. He had hidden it from his acquaintances himself. The public knew him mainly as an artist during the Nice Carnival.

Oeuvre

Mossa was a very diverse artist. In addition to his pictures, he left behind a large number of texts and opera librettos as well as other lyrical pieces. It is essential to see his work in the context of music, painting and literature. One source of ideas were the great French writers whom he devoured, especially Baudelaire.

His works are often dramatically composed, his drawings meticulously executed and often caricature-like. They analyze life situations and testify to psychological clarity. Mossa's work as a whole alludes to myths and narratives that he subjects to psychoanalysis: It is about conflicts between the life and death instincts. For example with “Salomé” but also with “Samson et Dalila”.

Work overview

• Salomé ou prologue du Christianisme ( 1901 )
• Circé (1904), huile sur toile. Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Bruxelles
• Judith et Holopherne ( 1904 )
• La sirène repue , Le baiser d'Hélène , Dalila s'amuse et Le Fœtus ( 1905 )
• Pierrot s'en va , Elle , Lui , La Sphinge , Valse macabre , Suzanne et les vieillards and Leda ( 1906 )
• Une charogne (1906), oil on canvas. Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Bruxelles
• Eva Pandora (1907), oil on canvas. Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Bruxelles
• Le Vice , Esther , Femme aux oenocoes , La Harpyie et Rubria ( 1907 )
• Les Mortes (1908), mixed technique on paper. Musée Fin-de-Siècle, Bruxelles
• Christ , Salomon et Salomé ( 1908 )
• Le coq et la perle ( 1909 )
• Bruges la morte ( 1911 )
• Les tristes heures de la guerre ( 1916 )
• Sourire de Reims ( 1918 )
• La Ronde des Sylphes ( 1913 av)

Illustrations

• Hyalis, le petit faune aux yeux bleus de Samain, chez Ferroud, (1918).
• Le petit soldat de plomb d'Anatole France, chez Ferroud, (1919).
• Xanthis ou la vitrine sentimentale de Samain, chez Ferroud, (1920).
• Les sept femmes de Barbe-Bleue d'Anatole France, chez Ferroud, (1921).
• La leçon bien apprise d'Anatole France, chez Ferroud, (1922).
• La ceinture de Vénus , (1923).
• Zadig ou la destinée de Voltaire, chez Ferroud, (1924).
• La légende des saintes Oliverie et Liberette , chez Ferroud, (1924).
• Madame de Luzy d'Anatole France, chez Ferroud, (1927).
• Hérodias de Flaubert, chez Ferroud, (1927).
• Le barbier de Séville de Beaumarchais, chez Ferroud, (1930).
• Chansons niçoises , chez Delrieu. 1953, 12 illustrations coloriées à la main par Mossa.

bibliography

• Collectif Association Symbolique Mossa et préface de Jean Roger Soubiran, Gustav-Adolf Mossa. Catalog raisonné des œuvres symbolistes, Paris, Somogy Éditions d'Art, 2010, 528 pp. ( ISBN 978-2-7572-0364-4 )
• Yolita René, Jean-Roger Soubiran, L'œuvre secrète de Gustav-Adolf Mossa , exhibition catalog, Namur, Musée Félicien Rops, 30 January - 16 May 2010, Namur: Musée provincial Félicien Rops; Province de Namur, 2010
• Carine Marret, L'Agonie du jour , detective novel, Verlag Baie des Anges, 2012 (the plot was spun around Mossa's painting Pierrot s'en va )

Web links

• Works by Mossa