Villon, Jacques

Villon, Jacques (1875–1963). French painter, graphic artist, and designer, born at Damville in Normandy, the elder brother of Marcel and Suzanne Duchamp and of Raymond Duchamp-Villon. His original name was Gaston Duchamp, but he changed it in 1895 because of his admiration for the 15th-century poet François Villon. In 1894 he moved to Paris to study law (his father's profession), but he soon abandoned it for art, initially earning his living mainly as a newspaper illustrator. He was one of the founders of the Salon d'Automne in 1903 and in 1905 he shared an exhibition with his brother Duchamp-Villon at the Galerie Legrip, Rouen. From about this time he began devoting more attention to painting, initially working in a Neo-Impressionist style, and from 1910 it was his main concern. In 1911 he began experimenting with Cubism, and the following year he was one of the founders of the Section d'Or group, whose name he coined (see also PUTEAUX GROUP). He exhibited (and sold) nine paintings at the Armory Show in New York in 1913. After the First World War (during which he served in the army) he began painting geometrical abstracts (Colour Perspective, Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1921), but in the 1920s he earned his living mainly as a printmaker (he was an expert etcher). In 1921 he had a one-man exhibition at the Société Anonyme, New York, and for most of the inter-war period he was probably better known in the USA than in Europe. During this time he moved back and forward between abstraction and a highly schematized type of figuration (Portrait of the Artist's Father, Guggenheim Museum, 1924). After the Second World War Villon enjoyed substantially greater recognition than in the earlier part of his career, winning First Prize at the Carnegie International in 1956 and the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale in 1958, when he was in his 80s. In 1955 he designed stained-glass windows for Metz Cathedral.