Jean Fautrier

Jean Fautrier (1898-1964) was a French avant-gardist painter. He was trained at the Royal Academy in London. Influenced by Turner, his style was figurative at first and played with light contrasts. His first paintings were displayed at the Visconti and Fabre galleries in Paris in 1924, where he was noticed by the collector Jeanne Castel.

Some years later, his style radically changed and became far more abstract. He began what would be called the “art informel” movement. At the end of World War II, he painted the series of paintings Otages in which he played with the painting material, superimposing layers of paste. In 1960, he received the painting award of the Venice Biennale.

This first critical catalogue of Jean Fautrier’s paintings (almost 1200) analyses each of his paintings through technical analysis, reference texts and transcripts of interviews and broadcasts.

Text in English and French.