Jaques Villon (1875 – 1963)  Born Gaston Emile Duchamp in Damville, Eure in the Haute-Normandie region of France, Villon adopted the pseudonym Jacques Villon, in honor of medieval French poet Francois Villon, to distance himself from his more famous sibling Marcel Duchamp. 

Villon was the eldest of four children and grew up in a prosperous and artistically inclined household.  When he and his brother Raymond move to Monmartre for their studies at the University of Paris, Villon studied law but managed to secure his father’s permission to study art as well.   With the art community of Monmartre expanding dramatically at the turn of the century, Villon lost interest in legal studies and began working in graphic media, designing posters and contributing cartoons and illustrations to Parisian newspapers.  He devoted himself to working in drypoint, a painstaking and highly respected intaglio technique.

Villon and his brothers organized a salon of sorts whose membership included the likes of Frances Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Alexander Calder and Fernand Léger dubbing themselves the Puteaux Group.  Their work was featured in the Sectiond’Or exhibition at the La Botie gallery in October 1912 and attracted much attention.

The following year Villon’s work was exhibited ant the Armory Show in NYC that helped introduce European art to the United States.  Villon’s work, seven large drypoints featuring strong geometric designs of shaded pyramidal planes, proved popular with American collectors.  By the 1930’s, Villon’s work was much better known in the US than it was in Europe.

Villon received the Carnegie Prize, the highest award for painting in the world, in 1950, was named Commander of the Legion of Honor in 1954 and was awarded the Grand prix at the Venice Bienale in 1956.

He died in his studio in Puteaux in 1963.