André Derain French, 1880-1954

André Derain's innovative approach to landscape, form, and color helped establish a framework for Fauvism in the early 20th century. Derain's paintings ranged from traditional still lifes to bright, off-kilter urban landscapes with dappled brushstrokes akin to those of the artist's forebear Georges Seurat. Instead of representing reality, Derain's expanded palettes pushed his canvases into more emotive, exuberant terrain, and his blocky forms helped lay the groundwork for Cubism (like Pablo Picasso, Derain took inspiration from Paul Cézanne).

The artist exhibited widely both within his native France and in cities such as New York, London, and Berlin. He participated in a number of seminal group shows, including a 1912 Der Blaue Reiter exhibition and the 1913 Armory Show in New York. In 1928, Derain won the Carnegie Prize. His work has sold for eight figures at auction and belongs in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Tate, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Musée de l'Orangerie.