Alain Jacquet valuation
Blew the printing dot up until the picture dissolved, starting with a picnic on the grass.
Alain Jacquet was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1939, studied architecture, and by the early 1960s was making what he called Camouflages — well-known images overlaid and disrupted.
What a work by Alain Jacquet is worth
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Bio
Alain Jacquet was born at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1939, studied architecture, and by the early 1960s was making what he called Camouflages — well-known images overlaid and disrupted. In 1964 he produced Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe, a photographic restaging of Manet with friends in a Paris garden, screenprinted in enlarged four-colour halftone dots onto canvas so that the picture breaks apart at close range and reassembles at a distance. It became the emblem of Mec Art, the French line of Pop that worked directly with mechanical reproduction. He later made work from satellite imagery of the earth and died in New York in 2008.
Le Dejeuner sur l'herbe exists in an edition on canvas with colour variations between examples, which is intrinsic to how it was printed, and identifying which example is at issue matters considerably. Beyond it, the market covers unique canvases, screenprinted multiples and works on paper, with the 1960s Mec Art period well ahead of the rest. Screenprint on canvas is a fragile combination — the ink layer can crack and lift — so condition needs a properly informed assessment. The artist's estate in New York handles attribution.
At a glance
- Born
- 22 February 1939, Neuilly-sur-Seine
- Died
- 4 September 2008, Manhattan
- Movement
- Pop art
More on Wikipedia.
The Camouflages, Paris and New York
Jacquet studied architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts but was self-taught as a painter. Camouflage Botticelli (Birth of Venus), of 1963 to 1964, one of the best known of the Camouflages, is in the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. He taught at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs and divided his life between New York and Paris.
In 1992 he married the painter Sophie Matisse, a great-granddaughter of Henri Matisse, and their daughter is Gaïa Jacquet-Matisse.
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
