Maurice Utrillo Jonas Netter Collection Palazzo Cipolla Rome.

 

In the same exhibition as Modigliani and Soutine were also the figurative paintings by Maurice Utrillo, also part of Jonas Netter Collection. Maurice Utrillo was born in Paris in 1883, the son of Suzanne Valadon (previously called Marie-Clementine Valadon and an impressive woman - her work is on show as well; she was a model and painter and a close friend of Modigliani and Toulouse-Lautrec) and the chronic alcoholic painter Boissy, so he was an illegitimate son as at the time Suzanne Valadon was an unmarried teenager. It's been said Maurice Utrillo was in love with his mother that when he was young he had epileptic fits; prostitutes later on in life used to call him the 'madman' while the kids in the neighbourhood in Montmartre called him 'Citrillo'. His mother introduced him to painting as a form of therapy to calm his nerves when he was young, which remained a life long passion of his but couldn't stop him later in life from suffering from tremors and deliriums. His grandmother used to give him wine to calm him down which eventually made him into an alcoholic. He once was found drinking cologne and turpentine (used to thin colours).

His original name was Maurice Valadon but the Spanish writer and art critic Miguel Utrillo who was a friend of Suzanne Valadon gave the boy his own name out of kindness. By the time he was 18 years old Utrillo was sent to an asylum temporarily. It's in this period that Maurice starts developing painting to keep balanced mentally; this was a turning point for him and it gave him focus; he produced many oil, watercolour paintings, sketches relying solely on postcards he carried with him or on his memory. Like Soutine he became famous around the 1920's and he was awarded the Cross of the Legion of Honour. He married Lucie Pauwels but suffered all through out his life with alcoholism; but alcoholism didn't stop him painting, and yes he was self destructive but thanks to his passion for painting, combined with his mother and then his wife helping him, he was able to cope.

All the paintings in the exhibition are of urban scenes ( he didn't paint portraits unlike other artists in the exhibition), many of them are repetitions, generally views of desolate roads, people only seen in the distance with muted winter colours, sad streets, the city buildings of Montmartre are predominant, picturesque before the First world war.

There are also some paintings done in the spring composed with brighter colours but again people only in the distance, empty roads. I was moved by them; the brush stroke is calm, he simplifies what he observes unlike the nightmarish forceful brushstrokes of Soutine ( which I loved too but they are so different) and he has a great sense of colour, he shows Paris under a different light in a period that is no longer there but at the same time he is so modern because the way he simplified the images makes it more appealing to a wider audience, and sadly to forgery.
 

In the exhibition there are also his Corsican landscapes. He did also paint landscapes of Britanny and several cathedrals in France. 1909-1914 were
considered to be his white period; he used zinc 

white sometimes mixed with plaster, he depicted ageing  cracked walls so white tints were predominant in this period and made him famous, while later on he moved to brighter colours which can be clearly seen in the exhibition. He doesn't have a tragic death unlike other artists such for example Modigliani. He dies in peace in his seventies in 1955 in La Vesinet which is really impressive considering the several nervous crises during his lifetime, the addiction to alcohol and distructive behaviour. Art critics usually put his work under post impressionist with an influence from landscape artists of the 18th and 19th centuries, but I would say as he didn't go to an atelier or school to train he has an individual style.

Maurice Utrillo with his favourite cat