Othon Friesz

French painter, 1879-1949

Friesz was a French artist of the Fauvist movement. During the last thirty years of his life, he painted in a style completely removed from that of his earlier colleagues and his contemporaries. Having abandoned the lively arabesques and brilliant colors of his Fauve years, Friesz returned to the more sober palette he had learned in Le Havre from his professor Charles Lhuillier and to an early admiration for Poussin, Chardin, and Corot. He painted in a manner that respected Cézanne’s ideas of logical composition, simple tonality, solidity of volume, and distinct separation of planes.