JACQUES DUTHOO 1910/1960

RARE OIL ON CANVAS DATED 52. 91X60CM. PROVENANCE FROM THE NICOISE COLLECTION

He began painting in 1943 and almost immediately moved towards abstraction. His first exhibition with Serge Poliakoff in Paris took place in 1947 at Denise René. He exhibited throughout his life at the Salon de Mai and was the subject of numerous private exhibitions in Paris, Brussels and in Switzerland.
The last during his lifetime took place in Paris at Ariel's in 1960. He maintained friendly relations with André Bauchant, Max Ernst, Bernard Boesch2 and Georges Rouault with whom he corresponded during the war and collected works.
The Museum of Fine Arts of the Canton of Vaud acquired a work in 1957. The HarvardArtMuseum has also owned a painting by the artist since 1960 (dated 1958) Source
In Tourangeaux, the name Duthoo immediately evokes the surname of a family associated with entrepreneurial success for more than a century. Les Nouvelles Galeries, les Monoprix, it’s the Duthoo family.
Jacques Duthoo (1910-1960) would perhaps have liked to be spoken of as an “abstract painter from Tours”. This savvy businessman, who played a large part in growing the family assets, was modesty personified. Few people from Tours knew him well in the end. However, the exhibition dedicated to him at the Château de Tours, for four months, until recent weeks, revealed a real posthumous meeting between a Touraine public attached to his “child prodigies”.
This retrospective through ninety works presented by the City at the Château de Tours undoubtedly made it possible to rehabilitate the talented painter, the passionate artist that was Jacques Duthoo.
Jacques Duthoo only started painting at the age of 33, around 1943. In 1946, Wilhelm Uhde, a famous art dealer, wanted to buy two paintings from him and invited him to his home on Place des Vosges in Paris. Duthoo is beginning to attract critical interest. He painted tirelessly, in his small Touraine studio on rue Jules-Simon, at number 23. In 1948, he exhibited at Denise René alongside masters like Mondrian, Kandinsky, Vasarely, Sonia Delaunay. Denise René, who would become the "popess of the arts", had noticed, very early on, the talent of Duthoo, this self-taught abstractionist who adored Voyet and Beauchamp, two great "naïves" from Tours.
In 1950, Duthoo discovered another form of expression, within the group “Graphies”; he took up engraving, and acquired a small press. Then he works in iron, creating very abstract roosters. “He searched for himself all his life, but we see in his last paintings that he knew where he had arrived,” says his son Bertrand, who owns many of his father’s paintings. Like his brothers and sister, like his nephews and the whole family, Bertrand Duthoo has an artistic admiration for this multi-talented father who died too soon...
In 1961, a year after the premature death, at the age of 50, of Jacques Duthoo, the city of Tours paid tribute to him, but it never exhibited Duthoo again until the last major exhibition last months at the Château de Tours.
“My father was not a socialite, he was discreet, undoubtedly this modesty did not help him to be recognized for his true value. »
In the preface to the very beautiful work which accompanied the exhibition at the Château de Tours, the mayor of Tours Serge Babary wrote: “Jacques Duthoo could have been satisfied with a bourgeois life of which his education and the management of his affairs could trace the comfortable contours. But for this autodidact, painting imposed itself with the force of evidence, like an irresistible inner adventure. »
Moreover, the title of the exhibition at the Château de Tours, “Jacques Duthoo, an inner adventure”, well summed up the personality of this man who was nourished by art and who, until his last breath, devoted his time to explore new forms of creation.

Ref: Y1VN4PRA0H