Jean Helion

Jean Hélion , actually Jean Bichier (born April 21, 1904 in Couterne sur Orne , Basse-Normandie ; † October 27, 1987 in Paris ), was an important French abstract and figurative painter of the 20th century.

life and work

Hélion initially practiced geometric-mathematical abstract painting based on the group de Stijl (friendship with Theo van Doesburg ), before he turned to freer abstraction. At the beginning of 1930 he co-founded the magazine Art concret (Doesburg, Otto Carlsund , Léon Tutundian , Marcel Wantz ) and in April 1930 publisher of the only issue of this magazine. Otto Carlsund, from whom the money came, went back to Sweden, the audience reaction was also disappointing. Art Concret dissolved and in early 1931 Doesburg, Tutundian and Hélion were founding members of Abstraction-Création . Helion worked from 1932 to 1934 on the magazine of the same name, he left the Abstraction-Création in 1934. In 1931 he traveled a good two months with the American painter William Einstein as a companion to the Soviet Union , a company that gave rise to initial skepticism about communism led. Hélion met Vladimir Tatlin , but noticed the lack of importance of constructivism in society. From 1936 to 1946 he lived in the United States of America, New York and Virginia. He spent a few months in France in 1938, volunteered for military service in 1939 and was mobilized in January 1940. In June he became a German prisoner of war, which he spent in a camp in Pomerania and on a prison ship in the port of the Pomeranian provincial capital, Szczecin . He managed to escape in early 1942 with the help of Mary Reynolds , who offered him shelter in Paris.

In New York he had some success and became the inspiration of the American Abstract School ( Ad Reinhardt , Robert Motherwell , the art historian Meyer Schapiro ). During this period, Hélion was particularly impressed by the work of his exile, Fernand Léger . He had a successful retrospective in Peggy Guggenheim's gallery Art of This Century in February / March 1943, but then turned to nude drawing, encouraged by his young wife Pegeen Vail / Guggenheim. However, Hélion had been moving towards figurative painting for some time. This phrase met with incomprehension and horror at first, but later influenced artists such as Gilles Aillaud and Eduardo Arroyo , but also Jim Dine, in their use of surface, color and atmosphere . Frequently recurring topics were newspaper readers, pumpkins and hats. Hélion, who went blind in the late 1960s, was forgotten for a while, but was honored on the occasion of his 100th birthday with a large exhibition at the Center Pompidou . Since 1978 he has been an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

family

After divorcing his first wife, Hélion married the American Jean Blair in 1932. He lived with her at times in Rockbridge Baths, Virginia . After Jean Blair's death in 1944, Pegeen (actually Jezebel Margaret) Vail (1926–1967), the daughter of the art patron , collector and gallery owner Peggy Guggenheim , became his third wife. They separated in 1958. Hélion married Jacqueline Ventadour in 1963, whose marriage to Pegeen's brother Michael Cedric Sindbad Vail (1923-1986) had failed. In 1958 Pegeen married the English painter and member of the Situationist International (founding member 1957, expelled in 1958) Ralph Rumney .

literature

• Jean Hélion: They Shall Not Have Me . EP Dutton, New York 1943.
• Center Pompidou: Jean Hélion . Editions du Center Pompidou, Paris 2004, ISBN 2-8442-6255-4 .

Web links

• Detailed description of the work and biography ( Memento from April 12, 2012 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ Honorary Members: Jean Hélion. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 11, 2019 .