The National House of Artists offers to rediscover original works of Jacqueline Duhême, a pioneer artist of illustration especially in the field of children’s literature.
Student of Paul Colin (a former resident of the House) and assistant-workshop of Henri Matisse (experience which she will retrace in Petite main chez Henri Matisse), her illustration work accompanied the works of the great 20th century authors: Jacques Prévert, Paul Eluard, Raymond Queneau, Maurice Druon, Gilles Deleuze… A press designer, Jacqueline Duhême also invents the drawn report and retraces the travels of Jackie Kennedy, Charles de Gaulle and Pope Paul VI. His various experiments in the fields of painting, advertising, journalism, literature, postal art and the peddling of poetry… will even extend to the tapestry, of which she makes boxes that will be woven by the Ateliers d'Aubusson. She will reinvent the art of biography drawn in A Life in Crobards. Friend Paul. Letters to Paul Eluard published by Gallimard (2019), a collection of hundred letters, which recount the evolution of feelings: the grief of love that turns into a tender friendship, accompanied by drawings and watercolours, which testify to his personal and poetic style, makes us witness the birth of the famous imagière that is Jacqueline Duhême.
Using the inimitable style of Jacqueline Duhême, the exhibition showcases the colour and poetry that emerges from the drawings of the woman for whom “drawing is a necessity, like giving a gift to someone you love.”
She currently resides at the Maison nationale des artistes.