Villon, Jacques. (1875–1963)

"Sleeping Nude" - Signed Etching

Original etching, ca. late 1940s, by the French Cubist and abstract painter and printmaker, depicting a reclining nude. Signed at the lower right and numbered 2/22 at the lower left in pencil. Light toning and soiling, some edge wear. Loose sheet, with a window mat. 7 x 5 inches (17.8 x 12.7 cm).

French artist Jacques Villon, born Gaston Duchamp, was the elder brother of sculptor Raymond Duchamp-Villon, the painter and conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp, and the painter Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti. He adopted his artistic name at age 20 in admiration of the poet François Villon. Generally considered the most important peintre-graveur of twentieth-century France, and played a key role in the development of modern print-making, as well as in the Cubist movement.

"Villon's cubism rationalized the open window of the impressionists by screening it with a fishnet of crisscross lines that catches objects on contact. This scheme particularly suited his needle because, as he remarked, while a pencil left him free to explore and retreat, 'Etching grips like a lasso, exacting precision.' In his color etchings and his paintings plane began to intersect like sheets of fire, for his cubism did not renounce the excitement of color. His years of drawing people instead of models kept his intellectual logic alert to a sitter's particularity. He said, 'When a sitter reveals something, grab it. A portrait is a holdup.' " Alpheus Hyatt Mayor, Prints and People: A Social History of Printed Pictures, 1971. (17990)

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