Gustav-Adolf Mossa (28 January 1883 – 25 May 1971) was a French

illustrator An illustrator is an artist who specializes in enhancing writing or elucidating concepts by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text or idea. The illustration may be intended to clarify complicat ...

playwright A playwright or dramatist is a person who writes plays. Etymology The word "play" is from Middle English pleye, from Old English plæġ, pleġa, plæġa ("play, exercise; sport, game; drama, applause"). The word "wright" is an archaic English ...

, essayist, curator and late

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

painter.

Early life

Mossa was born 28 January 1883 in Nice, to an Italian mother, Marguerite Alfieri, and , an artist, founding curator of the

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nice in Nice, France at 33 av. des Baumettes was built in the former private mansion built in 1878 by the Russian Princess, . Named for the artist Jules Chéret who lived and worked in Nice during his final years, the ...

(Nice Museum of Fine Arts) and organiser of the

Nice Carnival The Nice Carnival (french: Carnaval de Nice) is one of the world's major carnival events, alongside the Brazilian Carnival, Venetian Carnival, and Mardi Gras in New Orleans. It is held annually in February and sometimes early March (depending ...

from 1873.

Art and theatre work

Mossa received his initial artistic training from his father before studying at the School of Decorative Arts in Nice until 1900, where he became acquainted with

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

and was later introduced to the

movement after visiting the Exposition Universelle in the same year. Mossa was heavily inspired by the art of Symbolist painter

Gustave Moreau Gustave Moreau (; 6 April 1826 – 18 April 1898) was a French artist and an important figure in the Symbolist movement. Jean Cassou called him "the Symbolist painter par excellence".Cassou, Jean. 1979. ''The Concise Encyclopedia of Symbolism.' ...

Michael Gibson, ''Symbolism'', 1999, p.238 and Symbolist writers, such as

Charles Baudelaire Charles Pierre Baudelaire (, ; ; 9 April 1821 – 31 August 1867) was a French poetry, French poet who also produced notable work as an essayist and art critic. His poems exhibit mastery in the handling of rhyme and rhythm, contain an exoticis ...

Stéphane Mallarmé Stéphane Mallarmé ( , ; 18 March 1842 – 9 September 1898), pen name of Étienne Mallarmé, was a French poet and critic. He was a major French symbolist poet, and his work anticipated and inspired several revolutionary artistic schools of ...

Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly Jules-Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly (2 November 1808 – 23 April 1889) was a French novelist and short story writer. He specialised in mystery tales that explored hidden motivation and hinted at evil without being explicitly concerned with anythin ...

and

Joris-Karl Huysmans Charles-Marie-Georges Huysmans (, ; 5 February 1848 – 12 May 1907) was a French novelist and art critic who published his works as Joris-Karl Huysmans (, variably abbreviated as J. K. or J.-K.). He is most famous for the novel ''À rebou ...

The main body of Mossa's public and private art work was created with water colours and strong ink lines, the subjects including caricatures, Carnival or medieval scenes, portraits and landscapes, with a fascination for the French Riveria in particular. He also created wooden reliefs, designed theatre scenery, wrote literary essays and created book illustrations, including a large series of drawings for the work of

Robert Schumann Robert Schumann (; 8 June 181029 July 1856) was a German composer, pianist, and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career a ...

. In 1902 he began collaborating with his father on the

project, designing floats and posters. Both father and son are still celebrated for raising the Carnival's prestige, and the event continues to be a major, large scale tourism attraction in Nice.

Symbolist paintings

Mossa's decade long

period (1900-1911) was his most prolific and began as a reaction to the recent boom of socialite leisure activity on the French Rivera, his works comically satirising or condemning what was viewed as an increasingly materialistic society and the perceived danger of the emerging

New Woman The New Woman was a feminist ideal that emerged in the late 19th century and had a profound influence well into the 20th century. In 1894, Irish writer Sarah Grand (1854–1943) used the term "new woman" in an influential article, to refer to ...

at the turn of the century, whom Mossa appears to consider perverse by nature. His most common subjects were

femme fatale A ''femme fatale'' ( or ; ), sometimes called a maneater or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of ...

figures, some from Biblical sources, such as modernised versions of Judith,

Delilah Delilah ( ; , meaning "delicate";Gesenius's ''Hebrew-Chaldee Lexicon'' ar, دليلة, Dalīlah; grc, label=Greek, Δαλιδά, Dalidá) is a woman mentioned in the sixteenth chapter of the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. She is loved b ...

and

Salome Salome (; he, שְלוֹמִית, Shlomit, related to , "peace"; el, Σαλώμη), also known as Salome III, was a Jewish princess, the daughter of Herod II, son of Herod the Great, and princess Herodias, granddaughter of Herod the Great, an ...

, mythological creatures such as

Harpies In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, a harpy (plural harpies, , ; lat, harpȳia) is a half-human and half-bird personification of storm winds. They feature in Homeric poems. Descriptions They were generally depicted as birds with the head ...

or more contemporary and urban figures, such as his towering and dominant bourgeoise woman in ''Woman of Fashion and Jockey''. (1906) His 1905 work ''Elle'', the logo for the 2017

Geschlechterkampf The exhibition Battle of the Sexes – Franz von Stuck to Frida Kahlo (Geschlechterkampf – Franz von Stuck bis Frida Kahlo) was held from 24 November 2016 to 19 March 2017 at the Städel-Museum in Frankfurt am Main. 140 paintings, films and scul ...

exhibition on representations of gender in art, is an explicit example of Mossa's interpretation of malevolent female sexuality, with a nude giantess sitting atop a pile of bloodied corpses, a fanged cat sitting over her crotch, and wearing an elaborate headress inscribed with the Latin ''hoc volo, sic jubeo, sit pro ratione voluntas'' (What I want, I order, my will is reason enough). Many aspects of Mossa's paintings of this period were also indictive of the

decadent movement The Decadent movement (Fr. ''décadence'', “decay”) was a late-19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. The Decadent movement first flourished ...

, with his references to

Diabolism Satanism is a group of ideological An ideology is a set of beliefs or philosophies attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely epistemic, in which "practical elements are as prominent ...

, depictions of lesbianism (such as his two paintings of

Sappho Sappho (; el, Σαπφώ ''Sapphō'' ; Aeolic Greek ''Psápphō''; c. 630 – c. 570 BC) was an Archaic Greek poet from Eresos or Mytilene on the island of Lesbos. Sappho is known for her Greek lyric, lyric poetry, written to be sung while ...

), or an emphasis on violent, sadistic or morbid scenes. Though these paintings are the subject of most present day exhibitions, scholarly articles and books on the artist, they were not released to the public until after Mossa's death in 1971. In 1911, Mossa discovered Flemish Primitive and Gothic art while in Brugge and abandoned Symbolism.

Theatre

Mossa wrote several operas and plays, and contributed to a revival of dialectal theater with his first theatrical piece ''Lou Nouvé o sia lou pantai de Barb' Anto'' (1922), written in the

Niçard dialect ( Classical orthography), ( Mistralian orthography, ), ( , ), or () is the dialect that was historically spoken in the city of Nice, in France, and in all the area of the historical County of Nice. The affiliation of Niçard is debated: it is ...

. Following the play's success, Mossa established the Lou Teatre de Barba Martin group, who performed his comedies 'Phygaço' (1924), 'La Tina' (1926) and 'Lou Rei Carneval' (1935), until 1940. His plays are still performed in Nice.

Gallery work and later life

After the death of his father, Alexis, Mossa took over the curation of the Nice Museum of Fine Arts in 1927 and would keep the position until his death in 1971. Mossa would later bequeath most of his own artistic pieces to the gallery. From the end of the Second World War, Mossa devoted himself to creating works about the City of Nice, illustrating official documents, drawing armorial bearings and traditional suits of the County, and producing several watercolours of the region's landscapes.

Personal life

In 1908 he married Charlotte-Andrée Naudin, whom he divorced in 1918. He married again in 1925 to Lucrèce Roux, until her death in 1955. He was married a final time in 1956 to Marie-Marcelle Butteli, until his death on 25 May 1971.

Exhibitions and collections

Exhibitions

Permanent *The Musée-Galerie d' Alexis at Gustav Adolf Mossa is a museum dedicated to Mossa and his father in Nice *His works are part of ''The Fin-de-Siècle Museum'' section of the

Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium The Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (french: Musées royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, nl, Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België) are a group of art museums in Brussels, Belgium. They include six museums: the Oldmasters Muse ...

. ;Solo *1909 Nice, L'Artistique, ''Exposition d'oeuvres d'Alexis et de Gustav Adolf Mossa'' *1911 Paris, Galerie Georges Petit, ''Exposition d'oeuvres de G.A. Mossa'' *1913 Nice, Musée Municipal, ''Exposition d'images sur l'oeuvre de Schumann par G.A. Mossa'' *1913 Paris, Galeries George Petit, ''Exposition d'images de G.A. Mossa, inspirées par l 'oeuvre de Schumann'' *1974 Nice, Musée Jules Chéret, ''Alexis et Gustav Adolf Mossa, peintres niçois'' *1978 Nice, Galeries des Ponchettes, ''Gustave Adolf Mossa et les symboles'' *1989 Yokohama, Galerie Motomachi, ''Gustave Adolf Mossa'' *1992 Paris,

Pavillon des Arts The Pavillon des Arts was a museum located in the 1st arrondissement of Paris at Les Halles, 101, rue Rambuteau, Paris, France. According tan article in Evene.fr the museum closed in 2006. The museum was established in 1983 in a contemporary glass ...

, ''G. A. Mossa: L'Oeuvre symboliste 1903-1918 *2010 Belgium, Felicien Rops Museum, ''L'oeuvre Secrète de Gustav-Adolf Mossa'' ;Group *1976 Paris, Espace Pierre Cardin, ''Exposition Sarah Bernhardt'' *1981 Chicago, The David & Alfred Smart Gallery, University of Chicago, ''The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Women in 19th Century Art'' *2008 Évian-les-Bains, Palais Lumière, ''Eros and Thanatos'' *2015 Sacramento,

Crocker Art Museum The Crocker Art Museum is the oldest art museum in the Western United States, located in Sacramento, California. Founded in 1885, the museum holds one of the premier collections of Californian art. The collection includes American works dating f ...

, ''Toulouse-Lautrec and La Vie Moderne: Paris 1880-1910'' *2015 Paris,

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art ...

, ''Splendour and Misery. Pictures of Prostitution, 1850-1910'' *2017 Frankfurt, Städel-Museum, ''Geschlechterkampf''

References

External links

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Mossa, Gustav-Adolf French male painters French male non-fiction writers French curators 20th-century French illustrators 1883 births 1971 deaths 20th-century French essayists 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists French Symbolist painters 20th-century French dramatists and playwrights People from Nice 20th-century French male writers