AUGUSTE CHABAUD 1882-1955

A provençal painter, Auguste Chabaud adopts an aesthetic residing between fauvism and expressionism. A student of Pierre Grivolas at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts d'Avignon, Auguste Chabaud then went into exile in Paris in 1899 and attended the Julian and Carriere Academies. For financial reasons, the artist had to leave Paris in 1901 and joined the merchant navy as a pilot. In 1907, he came back to Paris after his military service in Tunisia (1903-1906), and exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants as well as the Salon d'Automne alongside the main protagonists of the fauve movement.
His paintings from this period perfectly depict Parisian nightlife: cabarets, theaters, cafes, lupanars where bright colours (yellow, red) rub shoulders with the colours of the night (navy blue, black). Despite the bustling capital and his regular participations in the Salons, Auguste Chabaud will remain faithful to his native Provence, particularly in Graveson in the Alpilles where he settled permanently upon his return from the war in 1919. In a letter to Jean René in 1928, he said: "Should I confess that I have not set foot in Paris since my return from war. It looks like that I'm stubborn, even biased. This is not the case. (...) Back from war, I was planning to go back, but the events of my life have helped to stabilize me here where I have a wife and four kids. So I say to myself: Why getting out of it, since we will have to get in."