Life

Abstract-colorist painter Paul Emile Fontaine was born in 1913 in Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester, Massachusetts

Worcester is a city and the county seat of Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. Named after Worcester, England, as of the 2010 Census the city's population is 181,045, making it the second largest city in New England after Boston....

 to Elzear and Mary Fontaine, both of French Canadian

French Canadian

French Canadian or Francophone Canadian, , generally refers to the descendents of French colonists who arrived in New France in the 17th and 18th centuries...

 descent. Fontaine had two brothers, Russell and Leo Fontaine, both younger. Paul Fontaine was early on encouraged to be a painter, deciding to pursue this artistic path as a teenager. He was enrolled at the Worcester Art Museum School following completion of high school, and remained there from 1932 to 1935. Fontaine graduated in 1935, and followed his studies with a six-month term in the Civilian Conservation Corps

Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D...

. In 1936, Fontaine worked as a Works Progress Administration

Works Progress Administration

The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...

 (or Section of Fine Arts, US Treasury) painter in Springfield, Massachusetts

Springfield, Massachusetts

Springfield is the most populous city in Western New England, and the seat of Hampden County, Massachusetts, United States. Springfield sits on the eastern bank of the Connecticut River near its confluence with three rivers; the western Westfield River, the eastern Chicopee River, and the eastern...

, painting murals in the city’s Post Office under Umberto Romano

Umberto Romano

Umberto Romano is a Swiss football player of Italian descent, he works currently as player-coach for FC Linth 04.- Career :He signed for FC Winterthur on 23 July 2004, and on 2 June 2009 was named as the new Player-Coach of FC Linth 04....

. Like many WPA murals, these contained images of Springfield and Massachusetts history in a bold, proletarian style, full of expressive movement and hard edges. In six panels, these murals now decorate Springfield’s federal building.

Following employment as a WPA painter, Fontaine was encouraged to continue his studies at Yale’s prestigious art school. Francis H. Taylor, director of the Worcester Art Museum

Worcester Art Museum

The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 35,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day, representing cultures from all over the world. The WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and is the second largest art museum in New England...

, secured a matching grant for Fontaine to engage further studies at Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

, the only time the Worcester Art Museum School donated significant funds to a student’s career. Fontaine began at Yale in 1938 and graduated among the top of his class in 1940. Fontaine was awarded the Winchester Wirt Traveling Fellowship the same year, but due to wartime exigencies, chose instead to study and paint in the Caribbean.

Paul Fontaine married fellow Yale art student Virginia Hammersmith in 1940. Virginia Fontaine was trained as a painter at Yale but did not graduate, and she became a major force in Paul’s subsequent creative activities. Virginia was born in 1915 to Paul and Myrtle Hammersmith of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (founders of the Hammersmith Printing Company). Following their marriage the Fontaines went to the British Virgin Islands

British Virgin Islands

The Virgin Islands, often called the British Virgin Islands , is a British overseas territory and overseas territory of the European Union, located in the Caribbean to the east of Puerto Rico. The islands make up part of the Virgin Islands archipelago, the remaining islands constituting the U.S...

, primarily Tortola

Tortola

Tortola is the largest and most populated of the British Virgin Islands, a group of islands that form part of the archipelago of the Virgin Islands. Local tradition recounts that Christopher Columbus named it Tortola, meaning "land of the Turtle Dove". Columbus named the island Santa Ana...

, on Paul’s fellowship, where he first began to extensively explore abstract forms in his watercolors. Meanwhile, Virginia Fontaine was a skilled photographer, regular diarist and frequent documenter of their lives together. Thus, experiences in the Virgin Islands were noted in both her pictures and words.

The Fontaines returned to Worcester in 1941, where Paul held a factory job and painted regularly, successfully submitting a number of watercolors for governmental tours. He also founded the Worcester Artists Group with Herbert Barnett, showed in Boston at the Grace Horn Galleries, and built a studio by hand behind his mother’s house, known as “Rocky Tor.” Paul Fontaine was drafted in 1943 and sent to Italy where he worked as an illustrator, also painting commissions for the US Army and Red Cross. Fontaine frequently painted semiabstract watercolors of the Italian countryside, maintaining his commitment to a career as an artist. The Fontaines’ first daughter, Carol, was born in 1943 in Worcester, MA. Starting in 1945, Paul worked as an Army cartographer in Paris, finally settling in Frankfurt as the graphic director for the Army’s regional headquarters. There, his work included posters and brochures. Paul stayed in this position until 1953, which allowed him the opportunity to live in Frankfurt as the city and its artistic community were rebuilt. During the late 1940s, Paul’s Italian watercolors also toured to acclaim in the United States in an exhibition organized by Virginia Fontaine that brought his work to Milwaukee and Ripon, WI; Kalamazoo, MI; Bloomington, IN; and Boston, MA. In 1948, the Fontaines’ second daughter, Eugenie (Paula), was born in Frankfurt.

The Fontaines’ apartment in Frankfurt soon became noted for its continual parade of artists, writers and musicians, for Virginia Fontaine made their home into a place where artists could meet, share ideas and get to know one another in postwar Frankfurt. Her goal was not only community building, but to introduce Paul to European artists and bring him into the artistic circle. This circle included Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the French Foreign Legion.-Life:...

, Bauhaus painter and weaver Ida Kerkovius, sculptors Ewald Mataré

Ewald Mataré

Ewald Wilhelm Hubert Mataré was a German painter and sculptor, who dealt with, among other things, the figures of men and animals in a stylized form.-Career:...

 and Karl Hartung, Otto Ritschl

Otto Ritschl

Otto Karl Albrecht Ritschl was a German theologian, the son of Albrecht Ritschl.After studying at Göttingen, Bonn and Giessen, he became professor at Kiel in 1889 and afterwards at Bonn...

 and Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.-Life:Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service...

. The Fontaines also bought and otherwise acquired a strong collection of modern and abstract European art, reflecting both status as an integral part of the art scene and contributing to the noteworthiness of the archives.

In 1953, the Fontaines moved to Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, where Paul became the art director for Stars and Stripes

Stars and Stripes (newspaper)

Stars and Stripes is a news source that operates from inside the United States Department of Defense but is editorially separate from it. The First Amendment protection which Stars and Stripes enjoys is safeguarded by Congress to whom an independent ombudsman, who serves the readers' interests,...

, the Army’s European circular. Like German-American painter Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Feininger

Lyonel Charles Feininger was a German-American painter, and a leading exponent of Expressionism. He also worked as a caricaturist and comic strip artist.-Life and work:...

, he was an accomplished cartoonist, and his caricatures and editorial art appeared in issues throughout the 1960s. This was his principal source of income until his retirement in 1969 at age 55. The Fontaines’ third daughter Claudia was born in Darmstadt in 1956. During this period, Virginia began to focus more on her own work, which included curating and photography. At the request of Gordon Gilkey

Gordon Gilkey

Gordon Waverly Gilkey was an American artist, educator, and promoter of the arts from Oregon. A native Oregonian, he served during World War II in Europe collecting art stolen by the Nazis for which he was award the Meritorious Service Medal and other accolades...

, the print curator for Oregon State University at Corvallis and former Adjutant General in charge of salvaging looted European art, she single-handedly curated and procured prints for an exhibition of contemporary German prints in 1963. She was also the translator for the first definitive work on Hans Hartung published by Ottomar Domnick who was a major collector of contemporary works from that time period. In addition, she photographed and was self-appointed publicist for the famed Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman

Mary Wigman was a German dancer, choreographer, and dance instructor.A pioneer of expressionist dance, her work was hailed for bringing the deepest of existential experiences to the stage...

 modern dance company and opera star Bruni Falcon.

From 1947 onward, Paul Fontaine remained committed to exploring the abstract in his art, with increasingly large canvases and defiantly non-representational forms in oil

Oil

An oil is any substance that is liquid at ambient temperatures and does not mix with water but may mix with other oils and organic solvents. This general definition includes vegetable oils, volatile essential oils, petrochemical oils, and synthetic oils....

, watercolor and acrylic paint

Acrylic paint

Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...

, often with bold areas of color and naturalistic hues. For the next 23 years, Virginia was also committed to the success of Paul Fontaine as an artist. She steadfastly continued to introduce him to fellow artists and to curators and galleries, earning him frequent shows in Europe and, occasionally, the United States.

In 1969, the Fontaines moved to Guadalajara, Mexico, following Paul Fontaine’s retirement. During his time in Mexico, the colors of his paintings became bolder, his forms gauzier and his canvases larger. He showed at the University of Colima, Jalisco, Mex. (1970) and, because he found Mexican culture more favorable, was able to represent himself to curators and galleries there. Following the death of Virginia in 1992 at age 75, Paul moved to Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 to be nearer to his daughters. He died in 1996 at age 82.

War Watercolors

Like many artists, Paul Fontaine sought a European sojourn as a way to put into practice what he had gleaned from his studies at the Yale Art School, a traveling fellowship (the Winchester Wirt Fellowship) that would have taken him to Paris and to Italy. However, with war breaking out in the 1930s, such a trek was unfeasible and thus Fontaine used his fellowship to take himself and Virginia to the Virgin Islands. They lived mostly in Tortola, but also spent time in Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico , officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico , is an unincorporated territory of the United States, located in the northeastern Caribbean, east of the Dominican Republic and west of both the United States Virgin Islands and the British Virgin Islands.Puerto Rico comprises an...

, Guana

Guana

Guana may refer to:* Guana Island, an island in the British Virgin Islands* Guiana Island , also called Guana Island* Roberto Guana, footballer...

, and Virgin Gorda

Virgin Gorda

Virgin Gorda is the third-largest and second most populous of the British Virgin Islands . Located at approximately 18 degrees, 48 minutes North, and 64 degrees, 30 minutes West, it covers an area of about...

 through 1940 and ’41. Ever Spartan, they built their own thatched hut and lived with the minimal resources available to them, though Paul’s painting flourished with gauzy, stippled impressions of beaches, palms, and sailboats that crept into his later abstract work. These watercolors are disarmingly simple and executed in close-value muted tones and shapes.

After this year abroad, the Fontaines returned to the States where they built a studio in Worcester called Rocky Tor, butted up against a hillside behind his parents’ home. Yet his time in the small-town Northeast was not to last, as Paul was drafted in 1943 and sent to Italy as an infantryman. While in Europe, Virginia sent him the materials needed to paint, and he exercised his muse during rare hours of down time. His war watercolors are abstractly impressionistic but with a confounding undercurrent not present in the Tortola works. The colors, when bright, seem washed-out and he favored a predominantly dusky tone. The images themselves focus on immediate and small moments culled from the artist’s individual experience, and echo a dreamlike state in which towns lie in ruin, children run in the streets toting discarded weapons, and shrapnel falls from the sky. Yet there is no pain in the faces of individuals – there is no Breughelian toil – and the abstraction doesn’t distance one from the scenario.

Fontaine had studied the craft of Japanese watercolor while in school, and it was this approach to perspective that informed the war watercolors. In “Taking Prisoners in Munzano,” the town seems made of mountain huts, dotted with sienna roofs, as a firing squad exercises its duty much as a monk washes his bowl. The forests are rendered in smoky hues, stacked atop one another in billowy calligraphic curls. Notan theory, wherein the composition is unchanged in its basic weight no matter what direction the picture is held, applies to these early works and is something that Fontaine carried throughout his life as a painter.

Following a group show at the Worcester Art Museum in May 1943, his next exhibition and second official one-man show was a touring one, first held at the Margaret Brown Gallery in Boston in March 1945 after his tour of duty, which focused entirely on the war watercolors. The show was also displayed at Ripon College, the Fitchburg Art Center, the Milwaukee Museum of Art, and the Kalamazoo Museum of Art. In October 1945, the Milwaukee Sentinel published a lengthy article on Fontaine’s watercolors to accompany the exhibition, entitled “Impressions of a Worcester Combat Artist,” which detailed Fontaine’s life and work up to that point and included images of significant war watercolors. Writer Robert Creighton states that “in Sgt. Fontaine we have a combat artist with a decidedly different slant. This young man, an outstanding product of the Worcester Art Museum School as well as of Yale, has expressly stated…that he had no intention of reproducing photographically the history of his progress up the Italian peninsula. Instead he has set down in his unique – and sometimes quite abstract – way the situations in which he found himself.” The show consisted of twenty watercolors, which constitute the only visual documentation of this period (he’d completed at least one hundred works while in Tortola).

After the war’s end, Fontaine began working for the Historical Division as a cartographer in Paris, but a change in position to graphics director found him relocating to Frankfurt, to be joined by Virginia and their young daughter Carol in the winter of 1946. With other materials available to him, Fontaine began working on a larger scale and with oils, allowing him to move into a more abstract arena.

Abstraction

Fontaine’s work of the 1950s and 60s, a large body of work executed mostly in oil and acrylic, were a definite break in scale from the war watercolors and works of the 1940s. His meeting of gallerist Lucia Stern in Boston was a turning point, as was an exhibition in Wiesbaden of the paintings of German abstractionists like Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister

Willi Baumeister was a German painter, scenic designer, art professor, and typographer.-Life:Willi Baumeister, born in Stuttgart in 1889, completed an apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his native city from 1905 to 1907, followed by military service...

, Otto Ritschl

Otto Ritschl

Otto Karl Albrecht Ritschl was a German theologian, the son of Albrecht Ritschl.After studying at Göttingen, Bonn and Giessen, he became professor at Kiel in 1889 and afterwards at Bonn...

, Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel

Erich Heckel was a German painter and printmaker, and a founding member of the Die Brücke group which existed 1905-1913.-Biography:Heckel was born in Döbeln . His parents were born in Saxony...

, Karlheinz Schmidt-Rotluff and Emile Nolde in 1949. In 1978, the artist related “in 1946 I discovered that a picture could be made without literary content. This filled me up with such excitement that up until today it’s the only form of painting that still captivates me. The purity of it. Form, color, line, rhythm, without compromise creating the picture. No need to reproduce a scene or tell a tale. What liberation.” Baumeister was particularly important because he helped Fontaine to see a definition and perception of space that was non-narrative. Fontaine’s war watercolors, for example, had begun to will themselves away from diaristic representation into an inky, flattened mode of Impressionism, but by the end of the decade Fontaine began to work on much larger surfaces with more expansive tonal areas.

An example of Fontaine’s early Fifties work is "The Charleston," completed in 1952 and exhibited at the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett. The painting does show an allegiance to Baumeister’s sense of shaped space: a green, black and grey whorl occupies the left side of the canvas, spinning outward in motion yet flattened and reigned in by a ring of scumbled, thick white paint and by larger blocks of color (such as the green, delta-like shape). Two wide black swaths cut towards the right, all on a gold-brown ground. Instead of being weighted toward the left side, Fontaine’s ground is washed like rusted siding, almost metallic or akin to heavy-gauge fabric. In addition to the long black parallels, there is a curled tendril that serves to balance the plane. There’s a very clear organization of space, with almost “stacked,” directly proximal sections, but Fontaine has a more unbridled sense of movement in this picture that makes him unabashedly American. Though Fontaine did not exhibit with New York School abstractionists, there is a rhythmic and spatial similarity to painters like Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock , known as Jackson Pollock, was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, and...

, Mark Tobey

Mark Tobey

Mark George Tobey was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the...

 and William Baziotes

William Baziotes

William Baziotes was an American painter influenced by Surrealism and was a contributor to Abstract Expressionism.-Life and career:...

.

Moving away from Baumeister’s influence, Fontaine’s canvases took a somewhat different turn. His large canvases were mostly done in acrylics, and by this time he had found a more unique way of dealing with flattening space, setting closely hued colors in relationship to one another not unlike chords in musical composition. In a number of the paintings, black leaf-like motifs appear chained together, swirling or floating around a central axis. In others, they are stacked or linear, though not with any sort of precise order and acting more like a loosely formed oriental rug. Their palette and arrangement do recall the Swiss painter Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

, whom Fontaine admired. Most of these paintings were untitled, as Fontaine approached them as abstract and non-literary entities.

Fontaine was, by the mid Fifties, living in Darmstadt

Darmstadt

Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...

, where he also had contact with composers of new music (Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...

 and Mauricio Kagel

Mauricio Kagel

Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...

 would be among these) and practitioners of modern dance and other arts. Crucial in this was his wife, Virginia Fontaine, who was socially well-connected among the area’s cultural and artistic circles. She was also instrumental (as was Baumeister) in getting Paul Fontaine to show in galleries and connect with the Darmstadter Sezession (where he was the only American member).

While he worked with larger surface area, often eclipsing 120 x 150 cm when working with acrylic paint

Acrylic paint

Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...

 on canvas, Fontaine remained committed to watercolors, creating smaller-scale pictures that retained a lot of the pictorial and spatial qualities of larger works. Painters who are able to translate large-scale canvases into narrower circumstances are few, but also include figures like Klee as well as American abstractionist Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman

Barnett Newman was an American artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.-Early life:...

.

Upon retiring from Stars and Stripes in 1969, the Fontaines moved to Guadalajara, Mexico. Of course, his approach to the canvas changed immeasurably upon relocating to a new environment and having an entirely different makeup of paint available to work with. Fontaine’s forms became gauzier and larger, while his palette became significantly brighter. Instead of grays, black, dark blues, gold, and brown, Fontaine embraced crimson, azure and verdant green, his whites less dirty and blacks less sooty. Upon leaving Darmstadt and Europe, writer Robert d’Hooge noted the following in Schlosskeller: “Since he has discovered his problems and his way of translating and expressing those in his paintings, Fontaine has gone without hesitation, his own way. It was always the intrinsic value of color, the improvement in their comparison and contrast, the vision of light and dark that was moving to Fontaine. Now the evolution has arrived at the Stadium of Wisdom, where the sonorous double-sound of two colors creates complete harmony in the smallest space. We do not know how the bright light of Mexico will affect the development of Fontaine’s painting. What is a loss for us can be gain for him. We wish this from our hearts.”

Fontaine’s approach to space also changed during this time; large areas of white ground supplanted by colorful floral explosions (called “schmoos”) recall some of Morris Louis’ stained “florals” in their color and impact. Motifs like doorways and sailboats are noted by the artist as chance abstract occurrences from a blank mind. Nevertheless, they are clear images in his work of the 1970s, such as Tortola (1970), where a boat-like half-moon structure and black “sails” crests a ground of choppy waves. As the artist states in 1978, “where the ideas come from is both unknown and confounding as well as impossible to verbalize… the strength of the impact should become easily communicative not just to me, but hopefully to everyone.” Perhaps the most important thing about Fontaine’s Mexican paintings is their embrace of color to a greater degree than in Germany. While working in the Frankfurt area and becoming acquainted with painters like Baumeister was important for his sense of space and composition, the verdant surroundings in Mexico gave rise to a significant and broad palette.

Like Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.-Biography:...

, Fontaine’s mature work remained singular in its intent, utilizing forms that were simple and direct, and he continued to refine these motifs throughout his time in Mexico. “Tortola,” a medium sized canvas with several deep black crescents arranged to form a sailboat-like motif, is superimposed over fiery oranges and reds. Though the figure is atop a swelling line of “waves,” there is enough push and pull between the black areas and the orange-reds that the image retains a tense flatness, rather than simple figure-ground. A 1978 work presents stippled goldenrod half-moons, turning on an axis in a sea of lighter yellow. Again, the boat motif is visible, but one is struck more by the activity of forms in stasis and motion than a particular image attachment.

After the death of his wife Virginia, Paul Fontaine moved to Austin, Texas

Austin, Texas

Austin is the capital city of the U.S. state of :Texas and the seat of Travis County. Located in Central Texas on the eastern edge of the American Southwest, it is the fourth-largest city in Texas and the 14th most populous city in the United States. It was the third-fastest-growing large city in...

 in 1992 in order to be close to his daughters. Though his health was failing, he continued to paint, using cheap and somewhat garish house paints as his medium of choice. Nevertheless, he was able to continue to create works that stood wholly in line with his singular Mexican period. “Acorono,” a canvas begun in Mexico in 1988 and completed in Austin in 1995, features a bright blue orb flanked on either side by brown and white scumbled fields. Grayish patches are above and below the orb, while flecks of red and black make their way across the field. These smaller elements work together to maintain a balance between shape and color area, keeping the surface flat and in motion.

Critical reception

Though most abstract painters are far from household names, Fontaine has been unknown, especially in the country of his birth. Expatriating to Europe could have improved his showing chances, and it did to a degree – exhibiting at Amsterdam

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

’s Stedelijk and the Neue Sezession in Darmstadt certainly counts toward a presence on the continental art scene. But even as he befriended and/or showed with artists like Baumeister, Ernst Wilhelm Nay

Ernst Wilhelm Nay

Ernst Wilhelm Nay was a German abstract painter influenced by L'Art Informel.Ernst Wilhelm Nay studied under Karl Hofer at the Berlin Art Academy from 1925 until 1928. His first sources of inspiration resulted from his preoccupation with Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Henri Matisse as well as Caspar...

, Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung

Hans Hartung was a German-French painter, known for his gestural abstract style. He was also a decorated World War II veteran of the French Foreign Legion.-Life:...

, and Bauhaus

Bauhaus

', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...

 weaver and painter Ida Kerkovius, Fontaine did not quite ascend in notoriety while in Europe.

His one-man show of war watercolors, organized with assistance from the Margaret Brown Gallery in Boston, toured museums in the US, travelling to the Milwaukee Art Institute, Indiana University, Ripon College, Kalamazoo Institute of Art, Fitchburg Art Center, and closing at the Brown Gallery. Living in Paris after the war, he showed at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles

Salon des Réalités Nouvelles

The Salon des Réalités Nouvelles is an association of artists and an art exhibition in Paris, focusing on abstract art.A first exhibition with the name was held in 1939 in Galerie Charpentier, organised by Robert Delaunay, Sonia Delaunay, Nelly van Doesburg and Fredo Sidès.In 1946 the Salon was...

 in Paris’ Museum of Modern Art (1950/51). While in Germany, he showed often at the Frankfurter Kunstkabinett (including a two-man show with Alexander Calder), among other locations, averaging about two shows a year. In Mexico, he showed at the Galeria Moderna and Centro de Arte Moderno in Guadalajara, as well as holding one-man shows at the Erie Art Museum (Erie, PA) and at Chicago’s Worthington Gallery.

Virginia Fontaine’s friendships with gallerist Hanna Bekker vom Rath and Washington State University curator Gordon Gilkey

Gordon Gilkey

Gordon Waverly Gilkey was an American artist, educator, and promoter of the arts from Oregon. A native Oregonian, he served during World War II in Europe collecting art stolen by the Nazis for which he was award the Meritorious Service Medal and other accolades...

did not seem to bleed into broad visibility for Fontaine. A 1963 review of paintings in Heidelberg, German and American Painting, did not significantly capture the tonal and spatial considerations that Fontaine was after: “Paul Fontaine, on the other hand, shows himself as a painter who loves the gentle and pleasant, without conscious consideration if, in his painting, he forces himself to artistic positions. The beautiful is dominant, and the contours break fluidly apart.” Critic Egon Vietta was to write a monograph on Fontaine’s work, but that plan was cut short by his untimely death. This isn’t to say that Fontaine’s art was totally ignored – after all, a list of his exhibitions proves the contrary. However, the depth of his approach did not receive the attention that it could have, either in his home country or his adopted homes in Germany and Mexico.

Exhibitions

1936 Corcoran Gallery, Washington D.C. USA

1940 Museum of Modern Art, New York USA

1941 Oct. San Juan, Puerto Rico

1941 Nov. Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts 39th Annual
Philadelphia Water color and print exhibition

1941 Dec. Jordan Marsh Gallery, Worcester, MA. USA

1942 Apr. Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA USA

1942 May Museum of Rhode Island School of Design. Providence, RI. USA

1942 Nov. Grace Horne Gallery, Boston MA. USA.

1942 May Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, MA. USA

1945 Mar. Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston MA. USA.

1945 Apr. Fitchberg Museum, Fitchberg, MA. USA

1945 Jun. Indiana State University Museum, USA.

1945 Oct. Milwaukee Art institute, WI, USA

1948 May Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Frankfurt, West Germany

1948 Jun. Wuppertal Barmen Museum, Westfalia, Germany

1949 Feb. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Germany

1949 Jul. Salon des Realites Nouvelles, Museum of Modern Art, Paris France

1950 Jan. Margaret Brown Gallery, Boston MA. USA

1950 Mar. Studio Fur Neue Kunst Doppersberg, Wuppertal, Germany

1950 Jun. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Germany

1950 Nov. Hamburger Volkerkunde Museum, Germany

1950 to Sept. 1951 One Man traveling exhibition to German Museums and US Cultural Centers

1950 Jul. Landesmuseum, Wiesbaden

1950 Aug. Marburg Museum

1950 Sept. Fulda Museum

1950 Oct. Giesen Museum

1950 Nov. Landesmuseum Kassel

1951 Jan. Frankfurt Museum

1951 Mar. Darmstadt Museum

1951 Apr. Die Brucke Galerie Elberfeld, Wupbertal

1951 Jun. Hamburg Museum

1951 Aug. Berlin Museum

1951 Jun. Salon des Realites NouveIles, Museum of Modern Art, Paris France

1951 Jul. Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA.

1951 Jul. Palace Hotel, St. Moritz, Switzerland

1951 Sep. Galerie Chichio Haller, Zurich Switzerland

1952 Mar. Zimmer Galerie Franck, Frankfurt/M, Germany

1952 Oct. Pittsburg Carnegie International USA

1953 Feb. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett (Paul Fontaine and Alexander Calder)

1953 Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam, Holland. (works in Dr. Otto. Domnick collection)

1954 Mar. Dortmund Museum am 0stwald, Westfalia, Germany

1954 Jun. Markischen Museum, Witten, Westfalia, Germany

1954 Jul. Amerika HAUS Hannover, Germany

1954 Sep. Darmstadt Stadtbucherei Austellung, Germany

1954 Oct. Buchhandlung Wertmuller Galeria, Basel Switzerland

1955 Jan. Stedlijk Museum Amsterdam Holland.

1955 Aug. to May 1956 Frankfurter Kunstkabinett World Tour Havana, Cuba, Palacio de Bellas Artes São Paulo, Brazil, Museum de Artes Santiago, Chile, German Chilean Culture Institute Capetown, South Africa, Gallery Kreitner Bombay, India J.J. School of Art Bangalore, India. Indian Institute of Culture New Deli, India, Jaipur House Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Museau de Arte Moderna Belo Horizonte, Brazil, Edificio Dante

1956 Feb. East & West Gallery, San Francisco CA. USA.

1956 Apr. Patio Galerie, Saxanhausen/Frankfurt, Germany

1958 Sep. Stadtmuseum Schloss Morsbroich Leverkusen, Germany

1958 Dec. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Germany

1959 Sep. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany

1960 Feb. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Germany

1960 Apr. Frankfurter Kunstkabinett, Germany

1960 Apr. Hamburg, Germany

1961 Sep. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany

1961 Nov. ORGANON 61 Earban Bayer Museum, Leverkusen, Germany

1963 Nov. Heidelberg Amerika Haus, Germany

1964 Apr. Hoechst Frankfurt, Germany

1964 Oct. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany

1964 Dec. Keller Galerie im Schloss Darmstadt, Germany

1965 Jul. Neckerman Exhibition, Frankfurt, Germany

1965 Sep. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany

1966 Apr. Tower Gallery am Rhein, Germany

1966 Jun. Patio Galerie, Baxanhausan/Frankfurt, Germany

1966 Aug. Aschaffenburg Museum, Germany

1967 Apr. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany
1968 Dec. Keller Galerie Im Schloss Darmstadt, Germany

1969 Sep. Neue Darmstadter Sezession, Germany

1970 Feb. Keller Galerie im Schloss Darmstadt, Germany

1971 Nov. Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano de Jalisco, Mexico

1972 Jan. University of Colima, Jalisco, Mexico

1972 Nov. Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano de Jalisco, Mexico

1973 Jul. Erie Art Museum, Erie, PA. USA.

1974 Jun. Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico

1974 Jul. Frohman Gallery, Suffolk, VA. USA.

1975 Jun. Jean Adam Gallery, Menlo Park CA. USA.

1978 Feb. Galeria Municipal, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.

1978 Apr. Galeria del Lago, Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico.

1978 Jul. Frohman Gallery, Suffolk, VA. USA.

1979 Feb. Ex Convento del Carmen, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1979 Collection Permanente Galeria Municipal, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1979 Apr. Richter Art Gallery, Danbury, CT. USA.

1979 May Adobe Art Gallery, Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, Mexico

1980 Mar. Centro de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara. Jalisco, Mexico

1980 May Centro de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1980 Jun. Galeria de Arte Contemporaneo, Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico

1980 Sep. Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano, Mexico, D.F.

1980 Oct. Centro de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1980 Nov. Centro de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1980 Dec. Centro de Arte Moderno, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1981 Sep. Galeria Marchand, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1984 Galeria Municipal TorresBodet, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1985 Oct. Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano, Mexico, D.F.

1985 Oct. Galeria Municipal Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1985 Oct. Centro de Arte Moderno, Gaadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1986 Jun. Galeria Alejandro Gallo, Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1986 Dec. Worthington Gallery Chicago IL, USA.

1987 Dec. Worthington Gallery Chicago IL, USA.

1989 Jan. Worthington Gallery Chicago III, USA.

1990 Feb. Centro Arte Moderno Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1991 Jun. Worthington Gallery Chicago IL USA.

1992 Aug. Galeria Alejandro Gallo Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico

1995 Sol de Rio Gallery, San Antonio, Texas, USA