As part of the 70th anniversary year of the Dina Vierny Gallery, Olivier Lorquin dedicates an exhibition to the painter Jacques Doucet (1924-1994) focused on three significant moments in his artistic journey through works from the 1955, 1960-1968 period, and collages from 1993.

Born in 1924 in Boulogne-sur-Seine, Jacques Doucet, a freedom-loving adolescent, developed a passion for painting and poetry. Hesitant to choose between the two paths, he met Max Jacob in 1941 to seek advice. With subtlety, the poet made him understand that only he should make this choice. Jacques Doucet chose painting, where his poetry is omnipresent. From 1949 to 1951, he participated in the CoBRA movement, inspired by children's drawings, graffiti, and folk art. Jacques Doucet shed his inventive, narrative, and ironic figuration. He became more abstract, eliminating the titles of his previous works. His brushstroke became broad and thick, with contrasting colors contained by a black outline, revealing "quirky and indicative forms." His painting was rich in textures and vibrant colors.

The 1960s marked a pictorial turning point in the painter's work. His canvases became more expressionistic, more lyrical, while tones were muted by the use of ochre, blue, and gray colors. This was the beginning of his collaboration with Dina Vierny, which lasted until 1976. She encouraged him in the path of collages. Jacques Doucet mixed fragments of illustrated papers, children's drawings, and his failed drawings. This period was followed by "Collage-Paintings" on larger supports.

In the 1990s, he once again created "collage-paintings," different, where the poetry of the titles was found. Afflicted with polyneuritis, Jacques Doucet used oil sticks on smaller formats to paint. He continued to express himself passionately, as in this series created in 1993 after his trip to Morocco. The colors, red, blue, yellow, burst forth while black graphics punctuate the canvas, reminding us that Jacques Doucet engaged in an intimate struggle with painting throughout his life.

Excerpt from Michel Ragon's text in "Jacques Doucet Parcours 1942-1959," Catalogue raisonné, Volume 1, Galilée Editions 1996, pp 10-11

"When Doucet transitioned from imaginary figuration to non-figuration, he recalled Paul Klee's recommendation: abstract painter, yes, but with memories.

So many scratches in Doucet's painting are the scars of traces of objects, traces of people, and so many shreds of memories. Traces of a struggle also against (and with) color, against (and with) material, against (and with) the indelible traces of daily life.

I have spoken of lyrical abstraction, and indeed, after the Cobra adventure, among the painters of lyrical abstraction, he will now exhibit. Nevertheless, it would be more accurate to say: abstract expressionist. Indeed, there is, increasingly, in Doucet's art, at the end of the fifties, a tension, a clenched expressivity, which aligns him more with certain American painters than, of course, with painters considered "of the French tradition," and even with most lyrical abstracts who are too abstract for him, and a bit too lyrical.

If there is lyricism in Doucet, it is always a restrained lyricism. Dina Vierny, who took over from Colette Allendy and Jean Pollak in the sixties, said of Doucet that he combined "a sense of measure and excess." An excellent definition. It is in the excess that he is expressionist and in the measure that he restrains his overflow in abstract reflection.

Because those who knew Doucet intimately know that this loudmouth, this Rabelaisian, was in reality the epitome of delicacy and kindness."