Jean Fautrier

Jean Fautrier, born in 1898 in Paris, was the main representative of the Art Informel movement. He moved to London with his mother in 1908. A year later, he started studying at the Royal Academy and the Slade School of Art. He returned to Paris for his military service in 1917. He first exhibited works in Paris in 1923. In the 1930s he worked in a hotel in the Alps and as a ski instructor for financial reasons. From 1940 onwards, back in Paris, he began to work with an impasto painting technique and relief like surface structures. In 1960 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Painting at the 30th Venice Biennale. Fautrier died in Châtenay-Malabry in 1964.