Auction no. 31 Modern and Contemporary Art Tuesday, February 21, 2017 at 20:00
- Item number 139
- Artist's name Marcel Dyf, 1899-1985
- Item name le parc Monceau à Paris
- Technique Oil on canvas
- Measurements 46X55 cm
- Signed Signed.
- Estimate $4000 - 6000
- Sold for $6600
- Remarks This work is recorded in the Marcel Dyf Archives under No. 5058.
- Item from overseas
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About The Artist
French painter best known for his work in the Impressionist movement.
Marcel Dyf’s family lived in Paris, but he spent his childhood holidays in Normandy. The artistic climate to which he was exposed in Paris and in Normandy was crucial during his youth, as innovative ideas and new thinking, born of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist movements, formed ever widening circles of influence in Europe. Dyf started a career as an engineer, but soon decided to become a painter. In 1922, he moved to Arles, where he was trained as a painter and set up a studio. Having finished his studies, his first employment takes him to Southern Morocco. Marveling at the beauty of the scenery, he makes the decision to dedicate himself to painting and to art.
In 1935, he moved to Paris, and acquired a studio once used by Maximilien Luce. Dyf only worked there for a few years before he joined the French Resistance during World War II.
From 1944 onwards, Dyf exhibits three times at the Petrides Gallery in Paris, returns to Arles, then moves to St. Paul de Vence.
In 1949, Dyf opened a studio in Saint Paul-de-Vence in Provence, France. The following year, he opened a second studio in Cannes, France, and studied at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh. The artist’s first show came in 1949 at the House of Petrides in Paris, France. The gallery exhibited his work again in 1951 and 1953.
After marrying his wife, Claudine In 1954, in Cannes, he asked her to pose for him, and many of his portrait paintings showed Claudine in various poses.
His paintings give an outward appearance of being simple, undemanding compositions, but the process of creating them was exactly the opposite – it was complex, rigorous, disciplined, considered, measured. The final effect, though, is to produce an art form that is so disarmingly uncomplicated that it remains, as the artist wished, accessible to all.
The artist eventually settled in Paris region and from this moment onward and up to his death on September the 15th 1985, his works are exhibited at Frost & Reed Gallery, London.