Tobeen

Felix Tobeen

Pelotaris, 1912
Born Félix Elie Bonnet
July 20, 1880
Bordeaux, France
Died March 14, 1938 (aged 57)
Saint-Valery-sur-Somme
Nationality French
Known for Painting
Movement Cubism

Tobeen (Bordeaux, July 20, 1880 - Saint-Valery-sur-Somme, March 1938) is the pseudonym of the French artist Félix Elie Bonnet.

Tobeen stayed frequently in the western part of thé Pyrenees, Basque Country, but was born and bred in Bordeaux. Because of his frequent reference to Basque subjects within his paintings he became known as a Basque artist. However, he was not a Basque and neither were his parents.[1]

From 1910 he worked in Paris where he maintained relations with the group of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque and with the group of the Duchamp brothers (Gaston, Raymond and Marcel) in Puteaux. He exhibited eleven works at the Salon de la Section d'Or, Galerie La Boétie, Paris, October 1912.[2]

Three photographs printed in the magazine Zlatá Praha (Golden Prague in Czech), 13 March 1914, for the occasion of the Moderni Umeni, S.V.U. Mánes exhibition in Prague. From left to right: Tobeen, Pelotaris (1912), Constantin Brâncuși, Portrait of Mademoiselle Pogany (1912), Jean Metzinger, La Femme à l'Éventail (Woman with a Fan) and En Canot (V Člunu)

But Tobeen was not a city-dweller. He loved a life of liberty, the sea, the woods and after 1920 he settled in Saint-Valery-sur-Somme. Tobeen's paintings, drawings and woodcarvings show the traces of his Parisian period and his passion for the poetry in human life.

Exhibitions

Museum collections

The Netherlands

France

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Félix Bonnet.