Yves Alix

1890-1969

Yves Alix was born in Fontainebleau, France in 1890. He studied at the Académie Julian in 1908 with Dunoyer de Segonzac and Luc-Albert Moreau in the atelier of Baschet and Royer, and the Académie Ranson from 1910 to 1912, where Maurice Denis, Bonnard, Serusier, and Vuillard were teaching.

Alix began exhibiting at the Salon des Indépendants in 1912. In 1913 he met André Lhote and came under the influence of the Cubists. At the outbreak of World War One he volunteered for military service. After the war ended in 1918 he began exhibiting at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries.

Alix had many gallery exhibitions in Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1930 he showed several paintings in the important retrospective “Trente ans des l’Art Indépendant”. During his career he also painted numerous decorative murals and exhibited at l'Exposition Universalle in 1937. Alix was a modernist and the influence of cubism was always present in his paintings. He is quoted as saying, “The greatest artist and the greatest poet of his art is Renoir.” However, it is hard to see any influence of Renoir in his work.

Like many of the painters between the wars, Alix also took commissions for commercial projects; he completed designs for tapestries for the passenger ship Normandie, and designs for the Comédie Français.

Alix is represented in many museums and private collections in France. One of his paintings that was commissioned for the Museum of Modern Western Art in Moscow is now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.