Jean Hélion (1904-1987) is one of the most disconcerting artists of the 20th centurye century. He never respected any constraints and paid dearly for his obstinacy in going against the dominant currents. One of his most famous paintings is called Backwards (1947), an expression which could have served as his motto. Today, when most of the dogmatisms he challenged are crumbling, we can hope that he will be better understood and that this retrospective will be one of definitive recognition.
Of this absolutely independent character, his life provides proof which could have been fatal. In 1939, he lived in the United States, in Virginia, with his first wife and their son, and his notoriety grew in New York. The war comes on September 3. Instead of trying to avoid mobilization, he voluntarily returned to France to enlist. On June 19, 1940, he was taken prisoner and sent to a stalag in Pomerania. Instead of waiting for the end of the war there, he escaped in February 1942, crossed Germany and Belgium by train and reached Paris, where he was helped by Mary Reynolds, then the companion of Marcel Duchamp. Then he clandestinely crossed the demarcation line, reached Marseille, where he also found Duchamp, and managed to embark for Baltimore. Arriving in the United States, he published the story of his escape under a title which could also be his motto, They Shall Not Have Me (Dutton, 1943; published in France by Claire Paulhan in 2018, They won’t have me), bestseller which strengthens the anti-Nazism of the American public. So much for the man.
Straight geometry
In painting, it is the same. After ordinary beginnings, in 1926 he met the Uruguayan painter Joaquin Torres Garcia, who introduced him to Jean Arp, Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg and Léon Tutundjian: they have in common an abstraction constructed by a straight geometry which delimits planes of color uniforms. It would be an understatement to say that their position is an arch-minority. Jean Hélion nevertheless joined them, founding two groups with them, in 1930 Concrete Art and, in 1931, Abstraction-Création. Black lines of varying thickness, rectangles of blue, yellow and red, the three primaries: this is the language of Mondrian and the De Stijl movement, which Hélion makes his own with ease.
He accumulates small drawings which are variations designed from these principles, to develop them into paintings. But this proliferation is the indication of a desire for experimentation which is not satisfied for long with the initial system. Straight lines must soon support the vicinity of curves and quadrilaterals have round corners from 1933: first license. A second follows. The color planes are no longer uniform, but modulated with nuances that suggest volumes. Then, quickly, they are affirmed: spindles, bent tubes, cylinders. The titles no longer say Compositionmore Monument – canvas of the rest admirable (1937) – and Blue figureor rose or, more explicitly, fallen. These increasingly anthropomorphic constructions develop against a background of flat colored areas, which gives the impression of seeing sculptural assemblages in front of a purely abstract painting. In 1937, Jean Hélion was already far from his beginnings.
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