Jacques Villon

Born: 1875

Death: 1963

Biography:

Jacques Villon of the Legion of Honor. In 1947 he was promoted to Officier (Officer) of the Legion of Honor. In 1950, Villon received the Carnegie Prize, the highest award for painting in the world, and in 1954 he was made a Commandeur (Commander) of the Legion of Honor. The following year he was commissioned to design stained-glass windows for the cathedral at Metz, France. In 1956 he was awarded the Grand Prix at the Venice Biennale exhibition.
Among Villon's greatest achievements as a printmaker was his creation of a purely graphic language for cubism – an accomplishment that no other printmaker, including his fellow cubists Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque, could claim.
Villon died in his studio at Puteaux.
In 1967, in Rouen, his last surviving artist brother Marcel helped organize an exhibition called Les Duchamp: Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp, Suzanne Duchamp. Some of this family exhibition was later shown at the Musée National d'Art Moderne in Paris.
Many important museums include works by Villon in their collections, including the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Columbus Museum of Art (Columbus, Ohio); Museum of Modern Art, New York City; University of Michigan Museum of Art (Ann Arbor, Michigan); National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia); Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris; and Musée Jenisch (Vevey, Switzerland).
Leading private collections which include the works of Villon are the Joachim Collection of Chicago, the Vess Collection of Detroit, and the Ginestet Collection of Paris.
In May 2004, an oil painting by Villon dated 1913 entitled L'Acrobate and measuring 39 ¼ by 28 ¼ inches sold at Sotheby's for $1,296,000 (US dollars).

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