Paul Guillaume

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Paul Guillaume - Novo Pilota . Portrait of Amedeo Modigliani, 1915

Paul Guillaume (* 1891 in Paris ; † 1934 there ) was a French art dealer and collector. In the 1920s he ran the most famous gallery for contemporary art in Paris. His modern art collection is in the Musée de l'Orangerie in Paris.

biography

Guillaume came from a humble background. Initially he sold African art. In 1914 he opened a small gallery and met numerous artists through Apollinaire . He signed Amedeo Modigliani as early as 1914 and organized the first retrospective on Mikhail Larionov and Natalija Goncharova (when both of them developed from neo-primitivism in favor of rayonism ).

He quickly embodied a new type of art dealer. It was not just about the pure mediation between artist and customer, but also about the mental and material support of the artists he represented. This self-image was very unusual at the time and was only practiced by a few other art dealers such as Paul Durand-Ruel and Ambroise Vollard . This brought Guillaume a high reputation among the artists, which Amedeo Modigliani expressed in one of the three portraits he made of Guillaume in 1914/15: he dubbed him "Novo Pilota" ("new helmsman"). He was an advocate of modern art and tried to bring it close to his contemporaries.

His gallery moved to the prestigious Rue La Boétie in 1920 and has long been one of the leading galleries for modern art in Paris. He represented many artists from the École de Paris , such as Rodolphe Bolliger , André Derain , Giorgio de Chirico , Amedeo Modigliani and also exhibited Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse . Albert C. Barnes , the collector and founder of the Barnes Foundation , chose Guillaume as its "main supplier".

In addition, Guillaume acquired a large art collection himself over the years. His early death at the age of 43 prevented the dream of owning his own collection. a. Works by Matisse, Picasso, Cézanne , Renoir , de Chirico and Modigliani were to be transferred to a museum of modern art. He decided, however, that his collection should be given to the Louvre . His widow Domenica, who was the second wife of the architect Jean Walter , later merged the collections of her two husbands and after long negotiations they were acquired by the French state in 1959 and 1963. The Musée de l'Orangerie , which was then under the administration of the Louvre, was chosen as the exhibition venue . In order to be able to exhibit the 144 paintings, extensive renovation work had to be carried out. The Guillaume-Walter Collection was shown there for the first time in 1984.

Fonts

  • Les Sculptures nègres , 1st edition 1917.
  • Les Ecrits De Paul Guillaume: Une Esthetique Nouvelle / L'Art Negre / MA Visite a La Fondation / Barnes . Editions Ides et Calendes, ISBN 2-825800511 .
  • Correspondence, Peter Read (Ed.): Guillaume Apollinaire , Paul Guillaume. Correspondance 1913-1918 . Musée de l'Orangerie , Paris. Gallimard, Paris 2016.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pneumatic post in the fight for modernity in FAZ from August 6, 2016, page 15
personal data
SURNAME Guillaume, Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French art dealer, gallery owner, collector
DATE OF BIRTH 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH 1934
Place of death Paris