Fred Deux

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Fred Deux (1995)

Fred Deux (born July 1, 1924 in Boulogne-Billancourt , † September 9, 2015 in La Châtre ) was a French graphic artist and writer .

Life

Fred Deux was born in 1924 in Boulogne-Billancourt, southwest of Paris, into a working-class family who lived in the basement of a bourgeois building that was often flooded by the nearby Seine in winter . Fred Deux's unstable health is attributed to it.

After school, Deux worked as an electrician on the night shift in a factory. In 1943 he joined the factory resistance group (FTP) and went underground. During the liberation he joined the Moroccan "Goumiers" and took part in the campaigns in the Vosges, Alsace and Germany.

Returning to France in 1947, he settled in Marseille , where he worked in the Clary library. He married and had two daughters. During this time he became familiar with the works of André Breton , Georges Bataille , Blaise Cendrars , Benjamin Péret and Marquis de Sade . Deux founded a surrealist group in Marseille . He discovered Paul Klee and began his first works on paper. Notes for “La Gana”, his first literary work, were created. After meeting Hans Reichel , he met the gallery owner Karl Flinker , who was on a trip to Marseille. This showed the works of Fred Deux to the art historian and writer Jean Cassou , who in turn published a review in Les Cahiers du Sud . In addition , there was an exhibition in the bookstore of Karl Flinker's father, Martin Flinker on Quai des Orfèvres, 68 in Paris.

Due to tuberculosis , Deux spent several months in a sanatorium , drawing and writing. He moved to Paris and met Hans Bellmer and André Breton . He became a member of the Surrealists. In 1951 he met Cécile Reims , an engraver who later became his wife. In 1954 Deux left the surrealist community around Breton and went to Corcelles for health reasons , where he wrote La Gana . La Gana was published in 1958 under the pseudonym Jean Douassot (under which he worked until 1971) and was awarded the Prix ​​de Mai .

In 1959 the couple moved to Lacoux and in 1973 they opened an arts center in Couzat, in the province of Berry . They lived in La Châtre until 1985 .

About the work

Fred Deux is an idiosyncratic artist who is not easy to classify in terms of art history. According to the art historian Rainer-Michael Mason , the work is located between Art brut and Henri Michaux .

An extensive collection of Deux's works is in the possession of the Bochum Art Museum . Sepp Hiekisch-Picard, deputy director of the Kunstmuseum Bochum, comments on the work as follows:

“In an overview, his work appears to oscillate between the poles of a dreamlike, fantastic figuration and an abstraction striving towards dissolution of form, between opposites of expressivity and meditative contemplation, which lead to surprising syntheses and further developments. A work that has been created for decades with tremendous work discipline in a monastic-looking seclusion, far removed from the current art scene, only committed to itself and the absolute demand for radical honesty in exploring one's own inner worlds. "

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Numerous museums showed works by Fred Deux. Including the Musée National d'Art Moderne in the Center Georges Pompidou in 1980 and the Musée Cantini in Marseille in 1989 . In the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, a retrospective is scheduled for his work, 2015.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ L'artiste et écrivain Fred Deux est mort , www.lemonde.fr
  2. ^ Louise Schendel, Thüringische Landeszeitung: Fred Deux in the Panorama Museum Bad Frankenhausen: A fight with sour apples, accessed on September 18, 2014
  3. ↑ Galerie Maragonː Fred Deux accessed on September 18, 2014 (English)
  4. ↑ Art tour Fred Deux - Le livre de la vie accessed on September 18, 2014
  5. ↑ Fred Deux and Cécile Reims in the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bochum , accessed on September 18, 2014.
  6. ↑ Today.deː Fred Deux - Le livre de la vie, accessed on September 18, 2014
personal data
SURNAME Deux, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Douassot, Jean
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French graphic artist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 1, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Boulogne-Billancourt , France
DATE OF DEATH September 9, 2015
Place of death La Chatre , France