Jean Fautrier

The artist's studio

Acquired directly from the above in 1959 - 1960

Paris, Galerie René Drouin, Les otages : peintures et sculptures de Fautrier, October - November 1945, no. 19

Paris, Galerie André Schoeller, Fautrier, 30 années de figuration informelle, November 1957

Milano, Galleria Apollinaire, Jean Fautrier, Fautrier Tempere, October - December 1958, n/b, illustrated

Rome, Galleria l'Attico, Mostra di opere dal 1928 a oggi, January 1959

Bologne, Galleria La Loggia, Tempere disegni lithografie di Fautrier, February - March 1959

Venice, XXX Biennale Internazionale d’arte, 1960, no. 108

Bergen, Kunstforening and Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Fautrier 1921-1963, February - March 1963 and March - April 1963, no. 20

Stockholm, Moderna Museet and Göteborg, Konstförening Konsthallen, Jean Fautrier Mälningar 1921-1963, September - October 1963, no. 20

Paris, Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, Jean Fautrier : rétrospective, April - May 1964, no. 8 (titré Otage n°8)

Nantes, Musée des Beaux Arts and Paris Art Center, Autour de Michel Ragon, June - September 1984 and September - November 1984, n/b. 5, p. 45, illustrated (titled Tête d'otage n°5)

Biot, Musée national Fernand Léger and Budapest, Mürcsarnok Galerie, Jean Fautrier l'enragé, June - September 1996 and October - November 1996

Paris, Centre Pompidou, Musée national d'art moderne, Face à l'histoire, December 1996 - April 1997, p. 293, illustrated in colors

Martigny, Fondation Pierre-Gianadda, Rétrospective Jean Fautrier, 17 December 2004 - 13 May 2005, no. 51, p. 107, illustrated in colors

Madrid, Fondation Thyssen-Bornemisza, Modern Realisms, October 2005 - January 2006, no. 141, p. 253, illustrated in colors

Michel Ragon, Fautrier, Paris 1957, no. 7, p. 9, illustrated in colors (titled Otage n°7)

Jean Lescure, "Dialoghi con Fautrier", La Biennale di Venezia, January - March 1959, n/b, p. 14, illustrated, (titled Otage n°7)

Julio Carlo Argan, Fautrier "matière et mémoire", Milan 1960, p. 28, illustrated in colors (titled Otage n°8)

Palma Bucarelli, Jean Fautrier pittura e materia, Milan 1960, no. 171, n/b, pl. 9, p. 319, illustrated

Michel Ragon, Naissance d'un art nouveau, Paris 1963, pl. 7, n/b, illustrated (titled Tête d'otage n°5)

Jean Paulhan, Castor Seibel, Gaspard, Edith Boisonnas, and al, "Dossier Fautrier", Cahiers bleus, January 1982, p. 11, illustrated in colors

Yves Peyré, Fautrier ou les outrages de l'impossible, Paris 1990, p. 9, illustrated in colors

François Boddaert, Petites portes d'éternité : la mort, la gloire et les littérateurs, Paris 1993, pl. XV, illustrated in colors (titled Otage n°8)

Marie-José Lefort, Catalogue Raisonné de l'Œuvre Peint, Paris 2023, no. 645, p. 366, illustrated in colors

Painted by Jean Fautrier in 1945, Tête d'otage no. 19 stands as a haunting testament to an unbearable memory. During the Second World War, the artist witnessed the mass execution of hostages whilst hidden behind a wall, listening to the sound of anonymous, unseen bodies falling on the other side. As hearing replaced sight, Fautrier translated this profound trauma into the Hostages series, composed of mutilated heads or bodies saturated with vivid color, which he referred to as “hieroglyphs of color.”

A friend of the engaged intellectuals of his time—André Malraux, Francis Ponge, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Paulhan and Paul Éluard—Fautrier was arrested by the Gestapo in January 1943 and later released. He then sought refuge in voluntary seclusion within the walls of a psychiatric hospital deep in the forest of Châtenay-Malabry, on the outskirts of Paris. Between 1943 and 1945, in the isolation of this building once inhabited by Chateaubriand, the Hostages series was born, “between the house of the mad and the clearing of the crime” (Pierre Cabane, Jean Fautrier, Paris, 1988, p. 35).

 In October 1945, Fautrier exhibited his Hostages series at the renowned Galerie René Drouin in Paris, accompanied by a preface by André Malraux. The installation of the Hostages in rows—evoking mass executions—had a profoundly unsettling impact on visitors. Pierre Restany later recalled the public’s reaction in the immediate aftermath of the war: “These thick omelettes of tragically tender colors astonished and displeased an audience eager for simple and reassuring joys, reluctant to accept the essential anguish of Being that this painting sought to assume.”

From a thick, oily, relief-like material—suggestive of torn and battered flesh—there seems to emerge a blood-red wound, still moist. Formed from dense aggregates of pigment on what remains of a face, Tête d'otage no. 19 stands as the portrait of a disfigured humanity. Here, Jean Fautrier experiments with his haute pâte technique, developed from a new material radically opposed to the traditional fluidity of oil paint. He first prepared the paper with a mixture of Spanish white and glue, shaping a solid, uneven surface that would serve as the ground upon which the image would float. Onto this prepared paper, Fautrier first brushed a preliminary image in ink, then scattered powders and other materials over the still-wet ground to give them the appearance of raw matter. Using a palette knife, he layered additional irregular strata of paste, then drew once more into the surface, carving grooves that complete both the relief and the image. In this sense, Tête d'otage no. 19 is an icon: with the invention of the haute pâte technique, it inaugurates an “Art autre”, according to the expression coined by Michel Tapié, while simultaneously embodying the infamy of modern history as a whole. Yet through the softness and richness of its tones, the work seems to offer a form of resistance to that infamy. This is precisely what Francis Ponge suggests in Peintures de Fautrier in 1945, his original preface to the Galerie Drouin exhibition: “And yet, that the faces of the hostages should be so beautiful, painted in such charming, harmonious colors—so akin to the pink, blue, yellow, orange or greenish flesh of flowers—might we not see in this a kind of heroism, a heroic lie, of divine and obstinate resistance, an opposition to horror through the affirmation of beauty”.