Fautrier, Jean (1898–1964). French painter, sculptor, and printmaker, born in Paris. He was illegitimate and was brought up by his grandmother. In 1908 both she and his father died and Fautrier moved to London to live with his mother. He began studying at the Royal Academy in 1912, when he was fourteen, and also studied briefly at the Slade School. In 1917 he was called up into the French army and was gassed. After the war he returned to Paris, where he exhibited regularly at the Salon d'Automne and in commercial galleries; his work included still-lifes, portraits, and nudes in a style similar to that of
Derain. He achieved considerable success in the 1920s ( André
Malraux was one of his admirers), but the economic decline of the 1930s damaged his market and from 1935 to 1939 he worked as a ski instructor in the Alps. He returned to Paris in 1939, but after being briefly imprisoned by the Germans in 1943 he fled to Châtenay-Malabry on the outskirts of the city, living there for the rest of his life. His new home was within earshot of woods where the Nazis carried out massacres, and it was here that Fautrier began the series for which he is particularly famous—
Hostages, inspired by his horror at brutality and suffering in wartime. These strange paintings feature layer upon layer of heavy paint creating a central image that is abstract but suggests a decaying human head. The pale powdery colours evoke death, but the delicacy of the handling gives them a mysterious ambivalence. They were exhibited at the Galerie René Drouin in Paris in 1945 and were much acclaimed. Fautrier also created sculptural versions of the
Hostages (examples of both types are in the Musée de l'Île de France, Sceaux).
The painted
Hostages have been seen as forerunners of
Art Informel, and with the postwar vogue for this kind of expressive abstraction Fautrier gained a reputation as one of the leading painters of the
École de Paris. Many exhibitions of his work were held in the 1950s, including one at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1958 that led Herbert
Read to comment—somewhat excessively—that ‘Fautrier, no less than
Kandinsky, or
Klee, or
Pollock, is a pioneer of a movement which has transformed the whole basis and intention of the plastic arts'. In 1960 he won the Grand Prix at the Venice
Biennale. Fautrier's other works included prints (notably lithographs illustrating Dante's
Inferno, 1928), and he developed a novel type of work called ‘multiple originals', printing a basic drawing on anything up to 300 canvases and then completing each work by hand. He first exhibited such works in 1950. See also
MULTIPLES.
