Lot 470. Henri Hayden 1883 – 1970. Table Verte. Signed Hayden and dated 1917 (lower left); titled and dated 1917 on the stretcher, oil on canvas, 81 by 54cm., 31⅞ by 21¼in. Framed: 83.3 by 56.4cm., 32¾ by 22¼in. Painted in 1917. The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Pierre Célice. Provenance: Galerie Suillerot, Paris. Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1982. Exhibited: Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-arts, Les Cubistes, 1973, no. 100. Estimate 180,000 – 250,000 GBP. Sotheby’s. 06/30/21. Not sold
Z długości opisu katalogowego, oraz z wyceny, mając mierne pojęcie o różnych okresach twórczości artysty, sądzę, że powinna to być ważna praca Henryka Haydena. Jeszcze ważniejsza, z 1913 roku, sprzedana została rok temu za ponad milion funtów: https://polishartcorner.com/2020/02/11/henryk-hayden-1883-1970/
“I only absorbed Cubism in 1915, after having swallowed and digested all of French painting in a few years. The rapid absorption led me, in a spirit of creative synthesis, without even realising, to Picasso and Braque’s experimentation at the time.” (Henri Hayden, quoted in: Anisabelle Berès & Michel Arveiller, Au temps des cubistes 1910- 1920, Paris, 2006, p. 252)
Having moved to Paris in 1907, Hayden was surrounded by the various artistic experiments of the French avant-garde. The Polish artist joined the Cubist movement in 1915, and befriended some of the most influential artists that were active in the capital, including Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and Georges Braque. Through the Salon des Indépendants, the art dealer Wilhelm Unde, and Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Hayden discovered the masterpieces of the avant-garde.
Table Verte, painted in 1917, is one of a small number of still-life works where the Polish painter’s thoughts on form and colour are brought to their highest point. Painted a year after Hayden had signed a contract with Léonce Rosenberg, whose gallery L’Effort Moderne was at the heart of the avant-garde, the work shows the influence of what had come to be known as “Synthetic Cubism”, which involved incorporating external elements into the canvas. Picasso and Braque had pioneered and experimented with this technique between 1912 and 1914. In the present work, Hayden distances himself from the fathers of Cubism in particular in his choice of colour palette, not limited to earthy and dark tones he introduces vivid tones of red and blue rhythmically throughout the composition. The newspaper headline “Le Jou” is a direct reference to Picasso, who had often employed this in his works of the 1910s.
The present work is hence a virtuous example of Hayden’s early articulation of Cubism. The artist demonstrates a veritable flare for surface handling, trompe l’oeil effects and inventive lines: the surface of the painting is dextrously divided into juxtaposed, contrasting textures, forms and colors that transform the everyday subject matter into a vibrant hymn to painting itself. In the Cubist genre par excellence of the still-life, Hayden succeeds in creating a new sensation of space through superposed lines and planes and the juxtaposition of warm and cold colours.
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