Jacques Doucet's work is inextricably bound with twentieth-century avant-garde and the freedom it generated, allowing artists to be able to spontaneously arrange forms, colours and materials, unimpeded by academic traditions.

This French-born Cobra* artist played a striking role in the years leading up to the Cobra phenomenon. In turn, the Cobra period offered him unique experiences that would have a major influence on his later work.

In June, 1947, in Budapest, Jacques Doucet met Corneille, the young Dutch painter, who was impressed by the maturity of the young Frenchman's work. Doucet was a fan of the work of Max Jacob, Alfred Jarry and Paul Klee. Corneille would later write, 'I was immediately enthusiastic about his style. He drew like a child who could set a whole world at his feet. ...a drawing with lines that range free, colourful, unashamed, like the everyday naked truth.'

Doucet joined the Cobra artists because the spirit of the movement gave him the freedom to depart from directions dictated by reason and to more deeply investigate the primal origins of creativity.

In 2011, May 11 to September 18, an international exhibition was devoted to the work of Jacques Doucet. Held first at the Cobra Museum in Amsterdam and traveling to three other locations, it was a collaboration with the Lieu d'Art et Action Contemporain in Dunkirk, France; the Cobra Museum of Modern Art and The Musee de Beaux-Arts in Quimper, France. Included were more that 80 works representing his career from early to late and featuring sculpture, ceramics, paintings, prints, gouaches and collages.

Source:
"Jacques Doucet, Le Cobra Francais", ARTLISTINGS, www.artlistings.com/events/703/jacques-doucet-le-cobra-fran (Accessed 4/26/2013)

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