Cubist Work up for Auction in Copenhagen

The highlight of this summer's auction at Bruun Rasmussen Auctioneers in Copenhagen is a magnificent painting by Henri Hayden from 1920 and entitled "Bretonne". With the painting’s multi-perspective it can rightly be called pure cubist and musical in its style. The painting originates from the artist's relatively short cubist period between 1915 to 1922.

In "Bretonne" the spatiality is distilled into a tight modernist focus on the formalities of the painting: surface, form and colour. The colour scheme moves across a refined scale, where shades of green leap into burnt tones with contrasts of cool blue and some accents in crimson. Through the style of Cubism, the figure is defined precisely by the fact that different elements in the image – both in and around the figure – dissolve and shift rhythmically as the planes of the image overlap and intertwine with each other.

The work has compositional, picturesque and colouristic similarities to Hayden's contemporary work, "Les Trois Musiciens" (1919-20), which depicts three figures with instruments in an equally fragmented visual space. Today, this painting belongs to the Musée National d’Art Moderne in the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

The title of "Bretonne" is most likely a nod to one of Hayden's earliest sources of inspiration in relation to the surface-oriented, contoured and decorative painting style, namely the works of Paul Gauguin. Hayden spent several summers in Brittany, where Gauguin had established himself as a modernist in the encounter with the countryside and locals a couple of decades earlier.

In the Melting Pot of Art

Born in Warsaw, Hayden left Poland in 1907 to permanently settle in the artistic melting pot of Paris. Here he came in direct contact with the new trends within the art of painting. He was, in his earliest years in Paris, engrossed in Gauguin's surface-oriented "Synthetism" and the picturesque expression of Renoir. But it was especially the constructive element of Paul Cézanne, which had a lasting influence on Hayden and led him towards the avant-garde artists of the time.

Especially the friendship with Juan Gris became crucial since Gris introduced Hayden to the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg. The two signed a contract in 1915, and Hayden thereby became part of the circle around "Galerie de L’Effort Moderne" with artists such as Pablo Picasso, Gino Severini, Jean Metzinger and Henri Matisse.

"Bretonne" is a very special work of art because it takes us right into the centre of Paris' avant-garde scene during the first decades of the 20th century. At the same time, it is a rare painting, simply because Henri Hayden’s cubist period was so relatively short," explains the Head of Bruun Rasmussen's Modern Art Department, Niels Raben.

"Bretonne" comes from the art collection of the furniture manufacturer Charles William Fearnley France (1897-1972), who immigrated to Denmark and from the 1950s became crucial for the concept of "Danish Modern" in the field of furniture design. Read more about Charles William Fearnley France.

Auction: Monday 3 June at 4 pm at Bredgade 33 in Copenhagen

Preview: 23-27 May at the same address