G. David Thompson Gallery, Pittsburgh
Alexander Iolas Gallery, New York
Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Panza di Biumo, Milan
Galerie Tarica, Paris
Private collection, since 1966
Bergen, Kunstforening and Oslo, Kunstnernes Hus, Jean Fautrier 1921-1963, respectively 22 February – 10 March 1963 and 23 March – 15 April 1963, no. 19
Stockholm, Moderna Museet and Gothenburg, Konstförening-Konsthallen, Jean Fautrier Mälningar 1921-1963, September-October 1963, no. 19
Paris, Musée d’Art Moderne, Jean Fautrier Rétrospective, April-May 1964, no. 35
Andros, Museum of Contemporary Art-Basil and Elise Goulandris Foundation, Glancing at the Century, 28 June – 20 September 1998, pp. 82-83, ill. p. 83
Palma Bucarelli, Jean Fautrier: Pictura e materia, Verona, Mondadori, 1960, no. 169, p. 318, ill.
Frances Morris, “Germaine Richier (1902-1959),” Paris Post-War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55, exhibition catalogue, London, The Tate Gallery, 9 June – 5 September 1993, pp. 89-90
In January 1943, Jean Fautrier was arrested by the Gestapo as a suspect for resistance action. When released, he found refuge in a psychiatric hospital ten kilometres south of Paris. The director offered Fautrier a private space he turned into a studio. But the clinic was close to Fresnes prison camps and at night the artist was hearing gunshots and screams from the nearby forests: they were the executions of resistance fighters or other prisoners by the Nazis. Thus, he began to paint a series of portraits he eventually called the Heads of hostages.
The Heads of hostages inaugurate an art between figurative and abstract painting, thus paving the way for the movement of formless art. With the help of the imagination required by their enigmatic title, we recognize in them sometimes an eye or a mouth, and others a nose in full-face or profile. Emerging from a deliberately gloomy, almost earthy composition, the white faces are reminiscent of shrouds. Fautrier used for the first time the haute pâte (matter painting) technique: he worked on paper that was then glued on canvas, on which he applied with a spatula a thick coating of glue and chalk. The clayey alloy was spread in successive brushstrokes, reminding both the rough surface of the oil-coated paintings and the fresco technique, which requires quick and spontaneous work, and finally the discreet introduction of a third dimension, visible until then in reliefs.
The series of the Heads represents Fautrier’s willingness to speak about the years of war, to testify, to lighten his post-liberation conscience. However, in his creative development, no consciously militant approach seems to exist. What haunted him, to the extent of imagining the faces of the prisoners, was their screams, as they were reaching him from afar, like coming out of a nightmare.
In the Head of a hostage, no. 17 the person depicted is one of the most abstract of the series: there are no ears, no eyes, no nose. Just one line indicating the mouth, a “rib”, according to André Malraux, and a long vertical scar that starts from the forehead, between reddish and brownish colour. The creature hiding behind this hint of anthropomorphism has undoubtedly suffered too much. And his silent cry seems so realistic, that becomes even more mournful.
