Art & Statues
Modern Figurative Paintings by Martin Wolpert and Jeffrey Winter
Modern Figurative Paintings: The Paris Connection by Martin Wolpert and Jeffrey Winter
Published by Schiffer, this 288-page hardcover documents more than one hundred fifty artists who worked, studied, and exhibited in Paris between 1890 and 1950, many of them largely forgotten by later scholarship. Authors Martin Wolpert and Jeffrey Winter drew on the archives of Papillon Gallery to assemble more than 375 color reproductions spanning La Belle Époque, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and the broader School of Paris. Beyond the paintings themselves, the images function as a visual record of the era, capturing scenes of bars, cabarets, jazz clubs, and artists' own studios alongside portraits and figure studies. The cover reproduces one such painting, a lively cabaret or gaming scene rendered in loose, expressive brushwork typical of the period's figurative painters. The book grew out of many years of research, and its authors intended it as a tool for rediscovering artists whose work remains, for now, available at reasonable prices.
Wolpert and Winter organize the book around the community of painters who converged on Paris during this six-decade span, a period that saw the city become the center of artistic innovation in the Western world. Rather than focusing solely on the most famous names of early modernism, the authors turn attention to the wider circle of artists who absorbed and contributed to those movements without achieving lasting recognition, restoring visibility to work that had gone largely undocumented.
Martin Wolpert has worked as a dealer and collector of fine art for more than thirty years, and Jeffrey Winter joined the project in 2000. Their combined access to the extensive library and archives of Papillon Gallery allowed them to compile both the biographical research and the image collection that make up the book, giving it a depth of primary material not easily found elsewhere.
This book is a valuable resource for collectors and historians interested in early twentieth century figurative painting, particularly those looking to identify or research lesser-known artists of the period. Its scope and illustration make it useful both as a reference and as a browsing volume for anyone drawn to the visual culture of Paris between the wars.
