For a long time, Jacque Villon stood in the shadow of his famous brother Marcel Duchamp, but the French graphic artist and painter established his own accents, and with the development of his own purely graphic language of Cubism, earned a unique merit.
(...) Continue readingJacques Villon – A family full of artists
Jacques Villon was born with the name Émile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp on 31 July 1875 in Damville. He came from a wealthy and artistically predisposed family and was the elder brother of the artist Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti. He spent his early years with his siblings in the care of his grandfather, the successful businessman and artist Émile Frédéric Nicolle, and in 1894, moved with his brother Raymond to Paris, where they took quarters in the artist-friendly quarter of Montmartre. Although Jacques Villon initially started studying law at the university in Paris, his father permitted him to pursue his artistic interest, on the condition that he conscientiously continue to study law alongside an art course. To distinguish himself from his siblings, Gaston Duchamp selected the artist’s name Jacques Villon, in homage to the great French poet of the Middle Ages, François Villon. He increasingly lost interest in a law career and neglected his notarial work in favour of his career as an artist.
Late Impressionism and Cubism
Jacques Villon worked as a graphic artist for ten years, contributing caricatures and illustrations to various Parisian magazines, including the weekly publication Le Courrier français. He produced advertising posters in a soft Belle Epoque style using the same lithographic technique as Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, an artist famous for his poster art. In 1903, he took part in the organisation of the drawing department of the first Salon d’Automne in Paris, and in 1904, took a course at the renowned Académie Julian. As well as Toulouse-Lautrec, Edgar Degas had a notable influence on Jacque Villon’s early artistic work. The late Impressionist phase was followed by a turn towards Cubism, to which he was long attributed. When Paris and Montmartre proved too hectic and lively for Villon, he moved to the gates of the city, to Puteaux. By 1911, he was a member of the artist’s group Séction d’Or together with Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, Francis Picabia and his brother Marcel Duchamp, the group publishing the famous Manifest Du cubisme the following year.
Great success in the USA
Due to his reclusive lifestyle, Jacques Villon was considered an outsider, and for a long time existed in the shadow of his more extrovert colleagues. This proved extremely productive, and he created over 700 paintings in his studio in Puteaux. When working, he started from a representational motif, broke it down into geometric shapes, and reassembled it with such a unique colouration that his pictures seemed like mosaics of luminous pieces of crystal. In 1913, Villon took part in the famous Armory Show In New York and contributed to the establishment of European Modernism in the USA. His works found such a resonance, that he was more famous there in the 1930s than in Europe. Jacques Villon received prizes and honours for his art, including the Grand Prize of the Venice Biennale in 1956. He also took part in the first two Documenta exhibitions of 1955 and 1959 in Kassel, and was posthumously represented at the third in 1964.
Jacques Villon died in Puteaux near Paris on 9 June 1963.
Jacques (Gaston Duchamp) Villon - Works that have already been sold at Kunsthaus Lempertz:
