Emile Othon Friesz was born in Le Havre on February 6, 1879. Despite the reluctance of his father, navigator, Othon Friesz’s mother eventually yield to his son’s constant requests and enrols him at the Havre School of Fine Arts at the age of thirteen. There, he attends Charles Lhuillier’s classes, which will play an essential role in the development of his work, alongside his friend Raoul Dufy. Then, he meets George Braque, a student at Courchet’s evening classes.
The painter receives a municipal scholarship in 1897 and continues his training at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris where he enters Leon Bonnat’s studio, an academic realist painter, who does not seem to have much influence on the young Othon Friesz. Dufy, again, joins him in 1899. Subsequently, Friesz becomes friend with Gustave Moreau’s students, among them: Manguin, Marquet, Matisse and later Camoin. Regardless of his teaching, it is at the Louvre that Friesz draws his greatest inspiration. Fascinated by the Impressionist group, he meets Guillaumin, thirty-eight years older, with whom he spends the summer in 1901, and then, Pissaro the following year.
In 1903 the artist participates for the first time in the Salon des Indépendants, then in the Salon d’automne in 1904 and does not yet enter the «cage aux fauves» in 1905, in which one may find a large part of Moreau’s students. Looking for a synthesis between modernity and tradition, Friesz only progressively liberates himself from deliquescent impressionist precepts.
It is during summer 1906 that the first genuine fauvist elements appear. At that time, Friesz is in Antwerp with his friend George Braque where he engages in original plastic experiments without, however, completely freeing himself from the naturalism of Impressionism. Pure colour, used by Braque to serve pictorial space, is not yet fully integrated into Friesz’s mind, who is more timidly approaching this revolutionary way of painting. Nevertheless, while Friesz exhibits at the 1906 Salon d’automne in Room 3 with Matisse, Manguin, Marquet, Derain, Vlaminck, Camoin, Girieud and Van Dongen it reveals a real desire to be part of the group. During winter 1907 Friesz travels alone to Honfleur. There, color finally sets the tone... and shape.
The fauvist peak, if not of the culmination of his entire work, occurs during a trip with Braque again, on the Mediterranean coast in La Ciotat in summer 1907. The two painters find there south of France’s extraordinary light, reminiscent of the young Friesz’s travels with his mother and which before them, had captivated Matisse and Derain. Inspired by the Mediterranean Sea and its warmth, the colour radiates in the artist’s canvases. While luxuriant vegetation is shaped through arabesque and stylisation of forms, drawing eradicates descriptive and illusionist elements to deliver only the essential: flamboyant, lyrical landscapes, whose chromatic force bursts. That’s it, Othon Friesz is a fauvist.
« It was suddenly, (...) in La Ciotat, from motifs in nature, that I realized that a lacquered contour had been born, indicating the hill with a line. I had returned to drawing instinctively, out of pictorial necessity. I had relearnt drawing by myself, felt drawing, which neither the masters nor the ancients had been able to teach me. A more severe art brought me back to style, made of cadences and rhythms. » (Othon Friesz, in F. Fels, L’Art vivant, de 1900 à nos jours, Genève, Pierre Cailler, 1950)
That same year, the artist exhibits about forty paintings at Druet’s gallery with whom he signs a contract of exclusivity. When the two artists return to Paris Braque gets closer to Picasso and his cubist theories. Friesz, on the other hand, seems drawn again by the past and those he admires. Cézanne’s influence, transposed by a solid structure, an energic line and strong contrasts become prominent in his following work. As the First World War approaches, his palette gradually darkens with shades of brown, green and blue.
Othon Friesz’s success becomes evident with exhibitions not only in France at Druet’s, Salon des Indépendants and Salon d’automne in Paris, but also in Moscow and London during the exhibition «Manet and the Post-Impressionists», at the Armory Show in New York, the Cassiner Gallery in Berlin, in St Petersburg, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Amsterdam, Leipzig, Prague, Brussels and finally Munich. However, the beginning of the First World War slows down his international fame.
In 1914, the painter makes a decisive encounter and starts building a lasting friendship with Léon Pédron, a rich coffee merchant. The businessman asks Friesz, a now renowned artist, to manage his art collection and while he also buys a large part of his artistic production. This financial collaboration allows the artist to lead a comfortable life as a recognized artist. Henceforth concerned about his commercial development, Friesz ends his contract of exclusivity with Druet. Then, the painter meets Emile Bernard and Maurice Denis, with whom he fervently defends Cézanne’s heritage.
In 1919 Pédron creates «Les Amis de la peinture moderne» to financially support Friesz’s work. The artist is named Chevalier in 1925, Officier in 1933 and finally Commandant de la Légion d’Honneur in 1938.
When Pedron dies, Katia Granoff, of the eponymous gallery, becomes Friesz’s main patron. In the last period of his life, the painter’s art became progressively more classical, lacking new research and plastic advances.
On January 10, 1949, Emile Othon Friesz dies in Paris.