Émile-Othon Friesz

Born 1879 in Le Havre
Died 1949 in Paris

The brilliant colors and undulating forms of the landscapes painted by Friesz in La Ciotat in the south of France exemplify his appropriation of Fauvism.

Already as a youth, Friesz attended the drawing school in Le Havre and formed a friendship with Dufy. From 1897 on, he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 1901 he met Guillaumin, whose colorful Impressionism influenced his landscape painting. In the summer of 1906, he traveled to Antwerp and painted harbor views that bespeak his interest in the innovative works of the Fauves.

He spent the summer of 1907 in La Ciotat with Georges Braque, painting the cliffs of Calanques in a Fauvist style. Upon his return to Paris, Friesz saw the Cézanne retrospective at the Salon d’Automne and was impressed by the latter’s pictorial structure and palette. From the 1920s on, his style became increasingly less radical.

Friesz in the collection

Émile-Othon Friesz is represented with one work in the Hasso Plattner Collection, on view in the Museum Barberini as a permanent loan from the Hasso Plattner Foundation. With over 110 paintings of French Impressionism and Post-Impressionism, including masterpieces by Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Berthe Morisot, Gustave Caillebotte, and Paul Signac, the museum in Potsdam is one of the most important centers of Impressionist landscape painting in the world.