Emile Othon Friesz Biography | Oil Painting Reproductions

Achille-Emile Othon Friesz went to school in his native city and it was while he was at the Lycée that he met his lifelong friend Raoul Dufy. He and Dufy studied together under Charles Lhuillier at the Le Havre School of Fine Arts in 1895-96 and then together went to Paris for further study under Bonnat at l’École Des Beaux-Arts. The painter made his artistic debut in 1900 at the Salon of the Société des Artistes Français. In Paris, Friesz met Henri Matisse and Georges Rouault. Like them, he rebelled against the Academic teaching of Léon Bonnat and became a member of the Les Fauves (the wild beasts), and exhibiting with them in 1907.

The artist Emile Othon Friesz traveled to Portugal in 1911 and to Belgium in 1912. He also went to Munich and Düsseldorf and participated in exhibitions with the Berlin Secession, this made Friesz's work known in Germany as well.

He opened his own studio in 1912 and taught until for two years, but World War I broke out and he joined the French army and stayed for the duration of the war. After the war, he resumed living in Paris and remained there until his death. His contact to Camille Pissarro especially influenced Friesz in that period of creativity.

Even though the artist used a more traditional, austere technique in his late works, several of his earlier works, especially from 1907, is regarded as the boldest examples of Fauvism.

During the last thirty years of his life, he painted in a style completely removed from that of his earlier colleagues and his contemporaries. He abandoned the lively arabesques and brilliant colors of his Fauve years, Emile Othon Friesz returned to the more sober palette he had learned in his youth in Le Havre from his professor Charles Lhuillier and to an early admiration for Nicolas Poussin, Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, and Jean Baptiste Camille Corot.

Art Movement: Fauvism.
Artists Influencing Emile-Othon Friesz: Charles Lhuillier, Camille Pissarro.
He Traveled To Portugal, Belgium, Germany, USA.
Artist's Biography compiled by Albert L. Mansour at The World's Artist, with text adapted from Wikipedia.