2. Artists & stock
3. Jacques Clauzel
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Jacques Clauzel was born in Nîmes in 1941. He studied painting at the Art School in Tourcoing, then in Montpellier, the last one where the classical technique of oil painting is still taught, after, in Paris.
In Paris, he went to Roger Chastel studio, a great and important painter but unknown. His teachings marked him for life. Chastel helped him to show in different salons (Grands et jeunes d’aujourd’hui, Salon de Mai). As a talented young artist, in 1964, he was « Grand logiste du Prix de Rome ».
Between 1965 and 1973, Jacques Clauzel lived and worked in Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire); first, Ivorian television decorator, then he became a teacher at the National Art School in Abidjan. From 1965 to 1968, it was a period of papers, painted papers, paper-cuts and reformatted. In 1968, he pursued another passion: the photography. During these long years in Africa he produced many photographic reports in different countries (Mali, Burkina-Faso, Niger, Ghana, Togo, Dahomey) published in two books (« Ici bon photo », and « Les marchés d’Abidjan »). Living in Africa was a long and deep reflection period. He collected african primitive arts.
Jacques Clauzel came back to France in 1973. He created an industrial photographic studio. Two years later (1975) he was hired by the Art School in Montpelier to create a photography studio; he stayed there twelve years. In 1976, he returned to painting, by automatic designs he called « drawings of a crazy man ». It was a period of extensive research focusing on papers (crumpled paper, torn and pasted, large papers mounted on canvas, works on kraft paper).
In 1983, Jacques Clauzel bought a printing press to print his first etchings and produced his first printings. In the middle of the eighties, the essential themes which identify his artwork are present in all the works. The artist abandoned oil painting and decided to use only materials and tools which generally are inappropriate to produce « art works » (kraft paper, carton, wall painting, basic and primitive tools, etc). It was  the period of numerous pictorial experimentations, a period of all possible.
Painting was made in parallel to other techniques: printings (engraving but also lithography and serigraphy) and still photography; engraving is for Jacques Clauzel an ideal field of experimentation in which he explores a lot of techniques: dry point, aquatint, etching, carborundum. He published many artist books in the edition « A travers » (Gallargues le Montueux) created  by himself and he cooperated with other publishers; so, over time, he shared pleasure of the books and friendship with many poets like Andrée Chedid, Pierre Torreilles (He published 22 books with him), Pierre Dhainaut, Salah Stétié, Maurice Benhamoun, Guillevic, Bernard Noël, Henri Sylvestre and Michel Butor.
Jacques Clauzel regularly exhibited paintings, engravings, books, most of the time in France but also in other countries. In 2010, he showed engravings at the Reattu museum in Arles. In 2012, he did a great exhibition with Jean Degottex at he modern and contemporary museum of art in Liège. In 2014, Jacques Clauzel decided to do an exceptional donation of all his engraving works to the Design and original Print Museum in Gravelines. This donation counts 820 printings produced from 1983 to 2014. With these works, he added plates, printed tests and drawings. This donation was included  in a solo retrospective exhibition and the publication of the catalogue raisonné of all his complete printed works.

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