Hayden, Henri
HAYDEN, HENRI
HAYDEN, HENRI (1883–1970), painter. Hayden was born in Warsaw, and arrived in Paris in 1907 to join a compatriot, *Marcoussis. Hayden's first major influence was Gauguin, but he soon came under the spell of Cezanne, notably in his first major painting "The Chess Players at La Rotunde," exhibited in 1914. Through the poet and critic André Salmon he met Juan Gris and Jacques *Lipchitz, who introduced him to Cubism. In due course he became a colleague of Picasso, Metzinger, Andre Lhote and Robert de la Fresnaye. The dealer Leonce Rosenberg put him under contract and bought his entire studio. His Cubist masterpiece "The Three Musicians" (1920) is now in the National Museum of Modern Art, Paris. From 1922 he adopteda more figurative style and returned to landscape. In 1939 he was forced to leave Paris and went to live in the remote French countryside, where he became a close friend of the writer Samuel Beckett. On his return to Paris in 1944 Hayden found his studio ransacked and most of his Cubist paintings missing. In the last 20 years of his life Hayden enjoyed renewed fame and popularity. His landscapes and still lifes combine a simplified Cubism with a new lyrical sense of color.
[Charles Samuel Spencer]