For Your Eyes Only

Image via Wikipedia

An exhibition of the work of Dutch Fauvist painter Kees van Dongen has been running at Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam since September 2010. Four months later, Kees is still pulling a crowd even on a weekday and I have to elbow people outta my way to get a decent view of the paintings. His work is colourful and flamboyant, much like the artist. 


Van Dongen was born around the red light district of Rotterdam in 1877 and moved to Paris when he was 20, exhibiting at the salons and hanging out with Picasso. He became a fashionable portrait artist, painting the who’s who of Paris and holding parties, dances and boxing matches in his studio. 

His work is an expression of this joie de vivre. Many of his portraits were of beautiful women with large dark eyes and copious amounts of black eyeliner. Many are nudes: He famously described the female body as ‘the most beautiful landscape’. Many are wearing the latest Paris fashions and even recently his work has inspired the fashion collections of Vera Wang. Many feature exotic women or scenes from his travels through Spain, Morocco and Egypt. 

Van Dongen lived till the ripe old age of 91 where he died in Monaco. He spent most of his life in France and received French nationality in 1929.  Clearly he is still loved in Paris- the exhibition heads there next.