AIMÉ FÉLIX DEL MARLE
The career of Félix Del Marle is organised in two main periods, one Futurist, the other Neo-Plastic. With much interest in Marinetti’s Manifesto published on February 20th 1909 in Le Figaro, Del Marle met in Paris the Futurist painters Bocciono and Severini. He adopted their theory and gave it a local tone when he published on July 13th 1913 his modernist Manifeste futuriste à Montmartre: ‘We need to destroy Montmartre and clear the new beauty of the geometric constructions, of the train stations, of the electrical devices, of the aircrafts’. The paintings he made at this time glorified speed, industrial life (Le Port, 1913), the bustle of the streets (Le Boulevard, 1913), separated the rhythms in juxtaposed elements (La Patineuse, 1913).
Del Marle is the only French artist to fully join the movement. The First World War stopped this excitement and although boasted by Marinetti as the ultimate Futurist act, it was for Del Marle a disappointing experience that would lead his reflexion toward the social part of art.
Circa 1918, he made photo-collages for satirical publications. In 1922, he met Kupka then Mondrian and Van Doesburg which was crucial. He joined the De Stijl group and would keep till the end of his life, despite a quick return to figuration, the principles of the neo-plastic composition as defined by Mondrian: primacy of vertical and horizontal lines, pure colours displayed.
But Del Marle insisted in the Vouloir review, to which he collaborated since its creation in 1924, the integration of art in collective and everyday life; he made then furnitures and interior decorations. Del Marle is the author, with Jean Gorin, of the neo-plastic polychromy of the Renault factories in Flins (1952).
He’s moreover, one of the founder of the Salon des réalités nouvelles (1946).
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