Jacques villon, pseudonym of
Gaston Emile Duchamp, was born on July 31, 1875 in Damville, Normandy, France.
Villon He was the brother of artists Suzanne Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, and Marcel Duchamp. In 1894 he moved to Paris to study law but, once there, he became interested in art, and spent the next 12 years making illustrations and caricatures for various newspapers. In 1903 he was one of the founders of the Autumn Salon, an association of exhibitors created as an alternative to the traditional Salon. He began studying painting in 1904. In 1906 he moved to the Parisian suburb of Puteaux, where he began to dedicate himself mainly to painting.
In its beginnings, Villon he adopted a neo-impressionist style; Around 1910, however, he began to develop a more mature style, combining the Cubist use of flat geometric shapes with a bright color palette. He and other artists of Cubist influence (including his two brothers) formed in 1912, a group called Section d’Or (“golden section”); Villon suggested the name to emphasize the group’s interest in geometric proportions.
In 1913 he exhibited a series of paintings at the Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition that helped promote his international reputation. The following year marked the start of World War I and Villon served in the French army. Between the two world wars, he worked in relative obscurity, painting abstract compositions based on color theory, such as Color Perspective (1922). Throughout the 1920s he made a living by working as a printmaker for a commercial gallery, reproducing works by other artists as etchings.
After the Second World War, Villon he became widely recognized as an important artist. He returned to a partial realistic treatment in portraits and landscapes, synthesized in impressionist colors and in the analysis of the cubist form. He also continued to be a prolific engraver; he completed more than 600 color lithographs, drypoints, and engravings, including many illustrations of literary works by Jean Racine, Hesiod, and Virgil. Two retrospectives of his paintings and prints were held in New York City in 1953; in 1956 he won the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale.
Jacques villon He died on June 9, 1963, near Paría, France.