2. Artists & stock
3. Jean Deyrolle
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Jean Deyrolle was born in Nogent-sur-Marne, France in 1911, where his father, who was a military doctor, was stationed. His family is Breton and they will settle in Vannes when he is only a few months old. They move to Quimper, then to Concarneau after the death of his father when he is 13. His grandfather is a painter. In 1929, Jean Deyrolle enters the School of Art and Publicity in Paris. He follows a formation for 3 years; he starts engraving and produces his first lithographs and linocuts. He obtains his diploma and abandons the busyness of Paris and moves back to Concarneau. He starts to paint and travels throughout Brittany, making studies of still-lives and painting the countryside.
Having obtained a grant Jean Deyrolle leaves for Morocco, where thanks to some exhibitions of his work, he manages to stay for several years. He meets up with his cousin and childhood friend, Jeannine Gilou, and meets her companion Nicolas de Staël. He travels with them, crossing the country, painting Moroccan themes. Jean Deyrolle comes back to Concarneau, in 1938 and uses his grandfather’s studio. The artist discovers the works of Paul Serusier. After he is demobilized in 1940, he often goes to Chateauneuf-du-Faou to visit with Mime Serusier, and to study the paintings and writing of the theoretician of the School of Pont-Aven.
In 1942 Jean Deyrolle moves to a studio in Paris on rue Daguerre, a studio where he will spend all of his time. He comes under the influence of Braque and Roger de la Fresnaye. He often sees Nicolas and Jeannine de Staël, and through them, he meets Andre Lanskoy. He pursues his research with determination. His meeting with Cesar Domela will help him little by little to liberate himself from figurative work.
It is in 1944 that the artist turns toward abstraction; he becomes friends with Alberto Magnelli, who will have a great spiritual impact on him. He then meets Jeanne Bucher who will buy his first non-figurative works. He participates in 1945 in the “Salon des Surindependents” and in the exhibition “Twenty years of Painting” at Jeanne Bucher’s gallery. The following year Deyrolle joins a group of abstract painters called the second generation who are founded around Denise Rene, but also with Dewasne, Marie Raymond, Schneider and Hartung. Soon Gilioli, Poliakoff and Vasarely join them.
Deyrolle converts a studio in the attic of a house near the ruins of Gordes. He will spend a lot of time here, joined by his friends. The first solo exhibition of Jean Deyrolle is organized in 1948 at the Denise Rene Gallery in Paris. This will be the first in a long series of solo exhibitions for the artist both in France and abroad. Jean Deyrolle will teach at the Academy Fernand Leger in 1953. It is during this period that the style of the artist, making his synthesis, frees himself. The first retrospective of the artist was organized in Brussels at the Palace of Fine Arts in 1956.
Jean Deyrolle was from 1959 to 1967 teacher at the Academy of the Art schools of Munich. He worked with unremitting effort until his death. He exhibits, paints, receives his distinctions, travels, and then moves permanently to Gordes in 1963.
Sick, his health gets worse in 1967. It was in this same year that he died in Toulon, where he underwent treatment.

The great invention of Jean Deyrolle is the oblique that allows movement beyond the placidity of support. - Jean-Claude Lahumière

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