Jean Fautrier: The Painter Who Wanted to Paint Everything

Jean Fautrier (1898–1964), a pivotal yet underrecognized figure in 20th-century French art, is the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. The exhibition, titled "Jean Fautrier: Matière et Lumière," traces his evolution from early figurative works to his role as a founder of Art Informel. Fautrier's career began in the 1920s with sarcastic realism, depicting humble subjects with disproportionate features. His "dark period" (c. 1926) featured somber still lifes influenced by Chardin, earning dealer support from Paul Guillaume and Léopold Zborowski. A 1928 stay on Port-Cros island lightened his palette, leading to the "gray period" and his first sculptures. During WWII, he developed a technique of applying gesso with a palette knife on paper, creating the famous "Otages" (Hostages) series—disturbing portraits of Gestapo prisoners exhibited in 1945 at Galerie René Drouin. Postwar, his "Objets" series depicted mundane industrial items, and in 1950 he invented "Originaux Multiples," a reproductive process. His late works, like the "Partisans" series (1956), inscribed with Paul Éluard's line "I write your name, Liberty," reaffirmed his commitment to reality over abstraction. The exhibition includes loans from the Fondation Gandur pour l'Art and other collections, featuring paintings, sculptures, and works on paper spanning his entire career.