Painter and illustrator (she illustrated nearly thirty books), Valentine Marie Augustine Gros, better known as Valentine Hugo, was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1887 as a painter and illustrator (she illustrated nearly thirty books). From 1907 to 1910, she studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris under Ferdinand Humbert. On completing her studies, she entered the circles of Marcel Proust, André Gide, Paul Morand,

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  Biography of Valentine Hugo

  Painter and illustrator (she illustrated nearly thirty books), Valentine Marie Augustine Gros, better known as Valentine Hugo, was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1887 as a painter and illustrator (she illustrated nearly thirty books). From 1907 to 1910, she studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris under Ferdinand Humbert. On completing her studies, she entered the circles of Marcel Proust, André Gide, Paul Morand, Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau, Erik Satie, Roger de la Fresnaye and others. She received many guests in her Paris flat.
  In 1913, Valentine Hugo wrote down and drew the costumes and choreography for ‘Le Sacre du Printemps’ after Vaslav Nijinsky. After the Great War, she continued to meet her friends in the ‘Groupe des Six’, a group of composers, where she met Georges Auric.
  In 1919, she married the painter Jean Hugo (great-grandson of Victor Hugo), whom she had met two years earlier. The couple settled near the Palaiis-Royal, where they had a popular salon. Valentine Hugo worked with her husband to create the costumes for Jean Cocteau's ‘Mariés de la tour Eiffel’. She spent holidays near Arcachon with Cocteau, accompanied by his friend Raymond Radiguet. In 1924, she again designed the costumes for Cocteau's play ‘Roméo et Juliette’. That same year, she decided to study engraving. About two years later (1926), the artist met the Surrealists.In 1929, Jean and Valentine Hugo separated and divorced two years later. Valentine Hugo had an affair with Paul Eluard, then another with André Breton, who fascinated her despite his relative coldness towards her. She painted the portraits of several Surrealists and illustrated the works of René Char, René Crevel and Paul Eluard, as well as Latréamont, and above all the reprint of Achim von Arnim's ‘Contes bizzares’, for which Breton wrote the preface.Valentine Hugo exhibited with Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Arp, Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, but she soon fell on hard times due to financial difficulties caused by the 1929 crisis and the collapse of the art market. She took part in the Salon des Surindépendants in 1935, then in the ‘Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism’ exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York the following year.Affected by the suicide of René Crevel (1935), and by the departure of Char, Tzara and Eluard who left the group, she turned away from Surrealism. After reuniting with Paul Eluard for ‘La Conquête du monde par l'image’, she ended her life in embarrassment and solitude.Valentine Hugo died in 1968, on her 81st birthday.
  

  

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