(Algiers 1883 - 1960 Bailly)

Vélocité. 1920.

Oil on panel.

22 x 32 cm.

We would like to thank Didier Vallens for confirming the authenticity of the work, February 2019.

Provenance:
- Estate of the artist.
- Marcel Fleiss, Paris.
- Michael Hasenclever, Munich (with label on the reverse).
- presumably Galerie von Bartha, Basel (1975).
- Private collection, Switzerland, presumably bought at the above gallery.

Exhibition: Munich 1986, Das Automobil in der Kunst, Haus der Kunst München, 9 August - 5 October 1986, p. 108, no. 25 (with ill.; in the book with the wrong support; with label on the reverse).

Henry Valensi was born in 1883 in Algeria. At the age of 15, he moved with his family to Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux Arts. Already by 1905, he had exhibited 150 works in the Salon des Orientalistes in the Grand Palais, followed by exhibitions at the Salon des Indépendants in 1907 and in Vichy 1909. In 1913 a large solo exhibition of 260 paintings, studies and drawings was dedicated to him at the La Boétie gallery.

In 1915, during the First World War, Valensi served as an army painter in the Dardanelles expedition. His subsequent friendship with the Futurists led to an invitation by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti to exhibit in Rome in 1920. Inspired by his Italian colleagues’ expressive paintings, he began to integrate movement into his works, creating a series on sports and modes of transport in which speed plays a central role. The present painting is from this period and is a preliminary study of the large major work "Expression de l'Automobile", located at the Centre Pompidou.

Valensi is the founder of the Musicalism artistic movement, which explored the use colour as a means to interpret the vibrations of sound onto canvas. Exploring a new conception of space, Musicalist painters sought to synchronise colour and form in the same way a musician arranges sounds to render an expression of emotions.