Sunday, February 22, 2:00 pm
A Talk by Laure Latham
The French artist George Daniel de Monfreid (1856-1929) broke from mainstream impressionism early on, becoming a leading voice of the post-impressionist movement in his country. Monfreid befriended artists such as Degas, Maillol, and Redon, feeding his own hunger for creation with revolutionary ideas on color and light. When kindred spirit Paul Gauguin moved to the South Pacific, Monfreid became his constant and essential link with the European art world. After Gauguin’s tragic death in 1902, Monfreid strove ceaselessly to celebrate the legacy of the friend he called “the Savage.” In another split from mainstream art, which considered regionalism inferior to Parisianism, Monfreid also created a modern art movement in Roussillon, French Catalonia.
Institute member Laure Latham is a London writer, adventurer, and startup founder. She graduated from Sorbonne and Paris Dauphine universities to become a corporate lawyer, and then moved to San Francisco, where she wrote about the outdoors. Laure is Monfreid’s great-great-granddaughter, and she co-authored with her father the first biography of their ancestor, George Daniel de Monfreid: Artiste et confident de Gauguin (2017). The second edition is scheduled to be published in connection with a major Monfreid retrospective this year at the museum of Perpignan in southern France. She also wrote Best Hikes with Kids: San Francisco Bay Area (2011) and is working on a novel set in 1839 Northern California.
