User:Eli185.2/Adolphe Basler

Portrait of Adolphe Basler by Amedeo Modigliani (1916, Brooklyn Museum)

Adolphe Basler (born April 28, 1878 in Tarnów, Austria-Hungary; died January 6, 1951 in Paris) was a Polish-French author, gallery owner, art critic, art historian and collector.

Life

Adolphe Basler came from a family of rabbis and innkeepers in Krakow. He initially studied chemistry in Zurich from 1896 before moving to Paris two years later, where he continued his studies at the Sorbonne. There he met his compatriot Mécisla Golberg, author of La morale des lignes, who introduced him to the fine arts and art criticism. He was a frequent guest at the Closerie des Lilas, in the circle around Paul Fort and Georges Kars. In order to make a living, he worked as an art dealer in the field of modern art and was one of the first to acquire works by Moise Kisling. In the 1920s, he ran the Galerie de Sèvres, where he showed works by Raoul Dufy, Maurice Utrillo and Othon Coubine.

Basler moved in Parisian artistic circles in the Montparnasse district around Modigliani, Jules Pascin, André Salmon, Rudolf Levy and others. Hans Purrmann described Basler as "another welcome habitué of the Dôme“. Klaus von Beyme wrote:

„Die Bernheims und Wildensteins, Berthe Weill und später Kahnweiler und die Rosenberg-Brüder, und jüdische Kritiker wie Adolphe Basler und Louis Mayer, der sich in Vauxcelles umbenannte, haben die Szene beherrscht.“

Basler wrote a series of essays and books on classical modern artists, including André Derain, Charles Despiau, Henri Matisse, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Maurice Utrillo and Suzanne Valadon, as well as La Peniture indépendante en France and La Sculpture Moderne en France, which also dealt with Wilhelm Lehmbruck. Basler also wrote for the magazines Die Aktion, Der Cicerone, La Revue blanche, Latinité, Les Soirées de Paris and Mercure de France, among others; he also corresponded with Alfred Stieglitz.

In his first contribution to Die Aktion in 1913, Basler criticized "the excessive intellectualism" of contemporary art in France and praised the naive "customs guard" Rousseau in return. Basler was ambivalent about Pablo Picasso; he appeared to him to be a "hermetic, strange painter" who only made allusions in his paintings and yet created a "sculptural symphony". He was critical of Cubism and Futurism; he spoke of the "present-day mechanization of art in the most interesting Cubist-Futurist speculations"; in his opinion, Cubism was merely a formula that artists used "to free themselves from the dominance of the conventional in painting." Basler described the École de Paris as a stylistic Esperanto, a view that is considered problematic today.

Basler owned a number of works by his artist friends, such as the drawing Frauenkopf by Picasso. He was portrayed by Amedeo Modigliani, Béla Czóbel, Isaac Grünewald, Moise Kisling and Foustedt, among others. Basler's essays, written in German, were mostly edited by Rudolf Levy.

Portrait of Adolphe Basler by Amedeo Modigliani

Selected publications

• mit Hans Curjel: Pariser Chronik. Biermann, 1922.
• Henri Matisse. Leipzig, Klinkhardt & Biermann 1924.
• Indenbuam. Paris: Editions Le Triangle (ca. 1925)
• Henri Rousseau et son œuvre: (le Douanier Rousseau). Paris: Librairie Gallimard, 1927 und New York City: Weyhe 1927
• Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Paris: Gallimard 1928.
• mit Ernest Brummer: L’Art Precolombien. Paris, Librairie de France, 1928.
• mit Charles Kunstler: La peinture independante en France. 2 Bände. I: De Monet a Bonnard. - II: De Matisse a Segonzac. Paris: G.Cres 1929.
• Le cafard apres la fete ou l'esthetisme d’aujourd'hui. Paris: Jean Budry 1929.
• mit Charles Kunstler: Le dessin et la gravure modernes en France. Paris: Les Editions G. Gres, 1930.
• Maurice Utrillo. Paris: Les Editions Cres, 1931.
• Leonard de Vinci. Paris: Braun & Cie. 1938.
  • Leonardo da Vinci. Meister der Kunst. Mülhausen im Elsass: Braun, 1942.

Literature

• Ulrich Wilke: Heinz Witte-Lenoir – Werkverzeichnis. Berichte von ihm und über ihn – Lehrer, Vorbilder und Weggefährten – Verzeichnis seiner Werke. Niebüll, Verlag videel o. J. (ca. 2003), ISBN 3-89906-669-3.

Weblinks

• Literatur von und über Adolphe Basler im SUDOC-Katalog (Verbund französischer Universitätsbibliotheken)
• Informationen über den Nachlass Baslers
• Fernand Léger: Brief an Adolphe Basler

References

[[Category:Men]] [[Category:1951 deaths]] [[Category:1878 births]] [[Category:French people]] [[Category:Polish people]] [[Category:Writers from Paris]] [[Category:Art collectors]] [[Category:Art historians]] [[Category:Art critics]]