Biographie

1881–1955

Born in Paris in 1881, Albert Gleizes trained as a fab­ric design­er in his father’s indus­tri­al design work­shop. Nephew of the aca­d­e­m­ic painter Léon Com­erre, Gleizes start­ed paint­ing auto­di­dact in 1901. In his first works Gleizes paired the Impres­sion­ist tech­nique of Pis­sar­ro with den­si­ty in com­po­si­tion used by the Neo-Impressionists.
The dis­cov­ery of the work of Paul Cézanne led Gleizes to paint in a pro­to-Cubist style.
Fol­low­ing a short peri­od of exper­i­ment­ing with Fau­vism around 1908, Gleizes found his call­ing in Cubism. Dur­ing the sum­mer of 1909, Gleizes sojourned in the Pyre­nees where he paint­ed in a sim­ple lin­ear way, akin to Hen­ri Le Fau­con­nier. Dur­ing 1910 Gleizes affirmed his Cubist style in the ana­lyt­i­cal decom­po­si­tion of the sub­ject and the use of mul­ti­ple view­points ren­dered in sub­dued colours. Gleizes par­tic­i­pat­ed in the 1911 ‘Salon des Indépen­dants’ which lat­er became known as the ‘Cubist Scan­dal’. Gleizes’ paint­ing enti­tled ‘Femme aux phlox’ hung along­side Cubist works by his friends Hen­ri le Fau­con­nier, Fer­nand Léger, Jean Met­zinger and Robert Delau­nay. It was the first time that the gen­er­al pub­lic was con­front­ed with Cubism — the work of Picas­so and Braque was exhib­it­ed at Daniel-Hen­ry Kahnweiler’s gallery and was only known in select intel­lec­tu­al circles.

In 1912, Gleizes and Jean Met­zinger pub­lished the movement’s first man­i­festo ‘Du Cubisme’. It stat­ed that the style was devel­oped from the use of suc­ces­sive simul­ta­ne­ous view­points to depict a sub­ject. Dur­ing the same year, Gleizes exhib­it­ed at the ‘Salon de la Sec­tion d’Or’ his paint­ing enti­tled ‘Dépi­quage des moissons’ which demon­strat­ed the painter’s tech­ni­cal skill and under­stand­ing of Cubism whilst also herald­ing Abstraction.

At the out­break of The Great War, Gleizes served at the front but was called back in 1915. Gleizes took this oppor­tu­ni­ty to depart for New York. Here he fre­quent­ed Mar­cel Duchamp and Fran­cis Picabia and dis­cov­ered in the rhythm of Jazz music an equiv­a­lent to his pic­tur­al research­es. In 1916, Gleizes was in Barcelona to attend his first one-man show. Upon his return to France in 1919, Gleizes des­ig­nat­ed much time to teach­ing and to the pur­suit of the the­o­ret­i­cal research into his so-called ‘tableaux-objets’, using flat colour planes in a geo­met­ric fash­ion. Gleizes alter­nat­ed pure Abstract com­po­si­tions with vague figuration.
In 1931, Gleizes joined the group ‘Abstrac­tion-Créa­tion’ which defend­ed inter­na­tion­al Abstract Art.

In 1937, Gleizes worked along­side Robert Delau­nay, Fer­nand Léger and Léopold Sur­vage on large murals for the Uni­ver­sal Exhi­bi­tion. In 1938, Gleizes, Jacques Vil­lion and Sonia Delau­nay pro­duced dec­o­ra­tive pan­els for the ‘Salon des Tui­leries’. Dur­ing the 1930’s, Gleizes’ Abstrac­tion became imbued with increas­ing spir­i­tu­al­i­ty, sourced in Byzan­tine and medieval paint­ing. In 1939, Gleizes set­tled in Saint-Rémy, Provence, sur­round­ed by his pupils. In 1947, Gleizes had a first ret­ro­spec­tive exhi­bi­tion in Lyon. Gleizes died in Avi­gnon in 1953.