2. Artists & stock
3. Jean Helion
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Jean Hélion was born in 1904 in Couterne, France. He decides to dedicate himself entirely to painting around 1925. Before arriving in Paris, he was studying chemistry. In Paris, he works in an architectural office. He paints his first works in 1922, exhibits in Montmartre, at the Salon des ‘Croutes’, two years later. Jean Hélion, at the beginning of the 30’s, takes frequent trips to North America. His trips becomes longer and longer. In 1940, he returns to France to carry out his military obligations. A prisoner of war, he invades Germany in 1942, and leaves for the United States, Virginia and New York, where he stays for a while. He comes back to France for good in 1948.
Jean Hélion participates in numerous collective exhibitions. In 1970, a travelling exhibition of his works is organized by the National Centre of Contemporary Art through all the cultural centres in France. In the same year, an exhibition of his work at the national galleries of the Grand Palais in Paris establishes the foundation of his success that was up until now uncertain. Numerous solo exhibitions are organized under his name (Karl Flinker Gallery, Museum of Modern Art in Paris, St. Etienne, Strasbourg, etc.).
After his death, in 1987, other exhibitions are presented (Colmar, Sables d’Olonne, Caen, etc.).
After his first figurative period, Hélion comes, without a transition, into abstraction in 1929. He becomes friends with Mondrian, Torres-Garcia, then Tutundjan, Carlsund and Théo Van Doesburng, with whom he participates in the creation of the ‘Cercle et Carré’. If his first abstract paintings conform to the formal considerations, the style of Hélion, resumes contact with reality, quickly becoming more flexible. It becomes for him a ‘language of clarity’. The war and captivity lead him to change his style. He comes back to figurative work. His drawing is primarily impersonal and mechanic, then little by little becomes more academic, not hesitating to paint street scenes, engaging in 1968 with the antiestablishment. The life, like the work of Jean Hélion, is itinerant.

“I proved to myself in drawing from nature that I can do it like anyone else; but never what I have produced appears real like the things that come out of my head and my heart. I believe that from now on I will not stop to drawing from nature, but always with a view from what I knew.” Jean Helion

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