Paris Arts Club

  La Tournée du cabaret Le Chat Noir (The Black Cat cabaret tour) 1896 Colour lithograph Steinlen's black cat is the emblem of bohemian Montmartre. The present exhibition commemorates the centenary of the artist's death in 1823. The poster was commissioned to advertise the famous Black Cat cabaret's road show which travelled as far as Tunisia, Algeria and Belgium. Cabaret owner- Rodolphe Salis- was Swiss, like Steinlen.  The cat is generally considered as being a very independent creature- so was the cabaret. It was the haunt of the artistic community and nicknamed 'Le petit Louvre de Montmartre'. 'Le Chat Noir' was also a magazine which was published weekly from 1882 to 1895, with features on Montmartre, poems and political satire.  L'Apothéose des Chats (The Apotheosis of the cats) ca 1885 Geneva As the exhibition notes state- Steinlen the artist belonged to only one school of art- the school of Liberty. Steinlen painted many cats - in groups, in pairs...

Arbre rouge (Red Tree) Provence 1953 Private Collection Nicolas de Staël (1914-1955) said that "all his life he needed to think painting, to see canvases, and paint in order to help him live." This major retrospective is the first in France since the one at the Pompidou Centre in 2003. It follows the development of the artist's particular 'block-like' style, thanks to 200 paintings, drawings and note-books from public and private collections in  the U.S. and Europe.  The single red tree may be contrasted with his clump of blue trees below from the same year: Arbres (Trees) Provence 1953 Private Collection The above works are from de Staël's latter period, when his style takes on a lyricism somewhere in between figuration and abstraction. His experiments led him on a quest for intensity, using at times thick over-layers of paint and he often used a spatula....like a plasterer or builder? Le Mur, Composition (The wall, Composition) Paris 1951 Private Collection,...