René Drouin
René Drouin was born in Pantin in 1905 and was a student at the Special School of Architecture. In 1930, at the age of 25, he became a contemporary furniture designer. He inaugurates a first art gallery which, initially, is intended more for Decorative Art, in relation with Leo Castelli, an art dealer who then fled fascist Italy because he was Jewish. For reasons similar, Castelli left France and left for New York in 1940.
Between 1940 and 1960, René Drouin's gallery welcomed artists who would become major in the history of abstraction. René Drouin will present “classics”, Kandinsky, for example. To several times, with great freedom, he will exhibit artists who can then be described as marginal; for the writing of the catalogues, he does not hesitate to invite writers, also adults, poets and young art critics. Thus, Jean-Paul Sartre signs the catalog of the exhibition of Wols in 1943. By the same artist, the 1945 catalog carries a text by Camille Bryen, also painter. Jean Fautrier's first exhibition saw the light of day in 1943. Proximity and exchanges with the writers come to nourish the enthusiastic artistic journey of René Drouin, in the process of decline with certainty. It was again René Drouin who organized Jean Dubuffet's first exhibition in 1944: his 200 drawings are presented by a text by Jean Paulhan, who published, in 1962, “Fautrier l’enragé” and inaugurates the term and the thought of “Informal art”.
Resources
René Drouin Gallery, Paris - databnf
René Drouin Gallery, Paris - idRef
René Drouin, an art publisher, a discoverer in the Parisian art market
Round table Laurence Imbernon, Jean-Claude Drouin, Nicole Marchand Zanartu, Claire Paulhan
René Drouin: When the exhibition catalog becomes an art book
Exhibition at the Museum of Decorative Arts from May 9 to July 23, 2017: Télécharger the little journal of the exhibition “René Drouin: when the exhibition catalog becomes an art book”