To celebrate the centenary of the surrealist artist Jacques Hérold, the Musée Cantini in Marseille presented around a hundred of his paintings, drawings and sculptures. It's the first time Hérold (1910-1987) had a major retrospective at a French museum.

The exhibition traced the Romanian-born artist's career beginning with his arrival in Paris in 1930 and his joining of the surrealists in 1934, the year he painted Crystal Amoureux. He remained involved with the group until 1951. The show also includes his late work from the 1960s, as well as photographs and Hérold's letters to his fellow surrealists.

Hérold has a special connection with Marseille: in 1940, along with other intellectuals, he fled to the South of France in the hope of obtaining a visa for the United States.

There, he lived with the community of artists that formed around Andre Bréton at the Air-Bel villa just outside the city and, with Breton, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner and others, created the Jeu de Marseille, a surrealist spin on the celebrated Tarot de Marseille. Hérold was responsible for two of the cards in the set: those dedicated to Lamiel - the hero of Stendhal's last, uncompleted novel - and De Sade.

The artist had a particular interest in the Divine Marquis and in 1942 visited Lacoste, De Sade's château in the Vaucluse; after the war, he purchased a house in the area and returned there each summer. Some of the other work produced by Hérold during this anxious period was also included in the Cantini show, including his contributions to Exquisite Corpse, a sort of surrealist version of the game of consequences used to create collective artworks.

Alas, he failed to obtain a visa and remained in Marseille until 1943, when he had to flee after the arrival of the Germans, who began to take an ominous interest in his Jewish origins.

Source:
http://www.marseille-provence.info/arts-and-culture/painting-and-photography/96-jacques-herold-at-the-musee-cantini-.html

Rumanian born, Jacques Herold was a Surrealist painter, printmaker and sculptor who studied from 1925 to 1926 at the Art Academy in Bucharest. He traveled to Paris in 1930 where he met Victor Braun, Yes Tanguy and Andre Breton.

He lived and worked in Paris joining Breton's Surrealist group and exhibiting at the Salon d'Automne beginning in 1936. Around this time Herold studied under Stanley William Hayter at his Atelier 17, alongside Europe's leading experimental printmakers.

Source:
Annex Galleries