Villon Jacques

Jacques Villon was a French painter. His actual name was Gaston Duchamp. He was born in Damville in 1875 and died in Puteaux in 1963. Duchamp was the eldest of an artist family of six children, including his brothers Raymond Duchamp-Villon, sculptor, Marcel Duchamp, painter, and his sister Suzanne Duchamp, painter. In 1894, Gaston adopted the name of his beloved poet as a pseudonym. From now on he called himself Jacques Villon. He gave up his law studies at a very young age to take up the artistic path. He received his first drawing training in Montmartre, in the studio of Fernand Cormon, where he met Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Influences from these, from Théophile Steinlen, from Jean-Louis Forain or from the Nabis did not escape Villon. In 1906 he settled in Puteaux and ventured into a cautious Cézannian cubism. In the Puteaux studio, Villon emerged from 1911 as the pioneer of the Section d'or group, with his brothers, Albert Gleizes, František Kupka, Albert Metzinger, Francis Picabia and Fernand Léger. Within this Puteaux group, synthetic cubism was rampant. In 1912, all his submitted canvases were sold to the American public at the Armory Show. In 1956 he was commissioned to develop the cartons for 5 stained glass windows in the Sacré-Coeur chapel of Metz Cathedral. Villon called himself Cubiste impressionniste (impressionist cubist). (Wikipedia)