Henry VALENSI 1883 - 1960 Illuminated Nocturne - 1959 Signed, dated and titled lower left "Henry Valensi, Nocturne Illuminé, 1959". 81 x 116cm Provenance: Orsay sale, 4 December 1977 Private collection, Paris Provenance: private collection Luxembourg The authenticity of this work has been confirmed by Mr Didier Vallens, the artist's nephew and President of the Henry Valensi Association. The certificate of authenticity dated 16.04.2021 will be given to the buyer. Henry Valensi was a French painter, film-maker, animator and art theorist who was born on 17 September 1883 in Algiers and died on 21 April 1960 in Bailly. He was the founder of the musicalism movement and the author of a single abstract "cinépeinture" animated film, La Symponie printanière1. In 1912, he managed and organised the Salon de la Section d'Or alongside Jacques Villon, Pierre Dumont, Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. Next to Marcel Duchamp's "Nu descendant l'escalier", Valensi hung "L'air autour que des sciieurs de long", which can be seen at the Musée des Beaux Arts in Lyon. In 1932, Henry Valensi and three other painters - Charles Blanc-Gatti, Gustave Bourgogne and Vito Stracquadaini - founded the Association des artistes musicalistes and organised the first of 23 Salons musicalistes at the Galerie Renaissance in Paris. According to their manifesto, painting "must follow the general laws of music, between rhythm, dynamics and simultaneity". They realised the importance of forming a nucleus that could attract other creators, and were soon joined by the painters Robert and Sonia Delaunay, the sculptor Zadkine, and the composers Maurice Ravel and Darius Milhaud. For Valensi, art has played a key role in the evolution of self-awareness across civilisations. Because it is science, rhythm and dynamism, in the 20th century music became the art form best able to express the nuances and subtleties of the human soul. Sound, like colour, is the vibration of matter, and the musicalist painter is the one who uses his art material (colour, line, shapes) to subjectively create a 'music' of colour on his canvas. The artist has never ceased to seek to inscribe temporality and movement in the space of the canvas. It's a quest that draws on both his travels and his love of science, particularly mathematics. A renowned theorist, Henry Valensi has published numerous works on the evolution of the arts and their relationship with materiality. He spoke of the materials of art: sound is the material of the composer, colour that of the painter, words that of the writer, stone or marble, etc. that of the sculptor. The five arts that Valensi lists are architecture, sculpture, painting, literature - including poetry - and music - including dance. Throughout history, these respective arts have been governed by the principles of a dominant art, which loses its materiality as time progresses: the artist defines this phenomenon as "the Law of Predominance "7.