September 2008
French artist Alain Jacquet died of cancer on September 4 at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York, at the age of 69. Born on February 22, 1939, in Neuilly-sur-Seine, he was a leading proponent of the pop art movement in France. This artistic movement emerged in the 1950s and drew its inspiration and techniques from popular mass culture, such as comics and ads.
Alain Jacquet had his first show in 1961 in France where he exhibited his "Cylinders" series, based on an abstract juxtaposition of vibrant colors in opposition to the aesthetics of the "Ecole de Paris." He soon made his reputation in the U.S. and Great Britain with his "Camouflages" series, which he began in the early sixties.
As early as 1964, when he moved to New York, he began to use serigraphy and started resorting systematically to this technique of mechanical reproduction using the screen's smallest unity—the point—as a genuine theme in his work. Often reinterpreting different historical models, including "Olympia" by Manet and "La Source" by Ingres, he is best known for his take on Manet's "Déjeuner sur l'Herbe" (1964), featuring a gallery owner, art critic Pierre Restany and a painter as the painting's central figures.
Alain Jacquet's works of art are part of the permanent collection of museums throughout the world, including the British Arts Council of Great Britain, the Fondation Cartier, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain, the Musée d'Art Moderne et d'Art Contemporain, the Musée National d'Art Moderne / Centre G. Pompidou, the Museum of Modern Art (New York) and the National Museum of American Art.
Divided between the dynamic artistic milieus in both New York and Paris, Alain Jacquet split his time between the two cultural capitals. He married Sophie Matisse, the great-granddaughter of the French Fauvist artist Henri Matisse and step-grand-daughter of Marcel Duchamp, in June 1992. She and their 15-year-old daughter, Gaïa Jacquet-Matisse, survive him.
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