In 1963, Jacqueline Lamba was invited by her long-time friends Henri Laugier and Marie Cuttoli to Simiane, a medieval village in the Alpes de Haute Provence, surrounded by lavender fields. The discovery of the region is overwhelming. So much so that they lent her the house every summer for 17 years, from June to October. She painted from dawn in the morning, and spent her afternoons walking until dusk. She received rare visitors and led an almost monastic life.
4, rue de Jarente
75004 Paris, France
Exhibition at the Galerie Pauline Pavec Un-arc-en ciel en pleine nuit from 29th March to 14th May 2022, in collaboration with Aube Breton Élléouët , Oona Élléouët and Merlin Hare. The gallery will be displaying paintings from her Nuages series, produced between the 1960s and 1980s.
Jacqueline Lamba’s works are also being unveiled by the gallery for Art Paris Art Fair from 7th to 10th April 2022. On this occasion Jacqueline Lamba is part of Alfred Pacquement’s selection on the them of Natural Histories.
The gallery will also present Jacqueline Lamba’s work at Tefaf Maastricht between 24th and 30th June 2022.
‘Jacqueline Lamba, L’Amour fou d’André Breton, named after the poetic essay dedicated to her by the founder of Surrealism, devoted her entire life to painting, beginning with her training at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. Married to André Breton a few months after meeting the poet in 1934, who described her as ‘scandalously beautiful’, she took part in the Surrealist group’s exhibitions, such as the one at the Charles Ratton gallery in 1936, where she presented poem-objects. From Paris to New York via Mexico, her itinerary brought her into contact with many of the group’s figures, while she developed a friendship with Dora Maar and Frida Kahlo. In the USA, and after her return to France in 1955, her painting moved away from surrealism towards a more abstract approach in which the influence of Picasso was felt. It was from the 1960s onwards that her work found its definitive style, a painting of light that evoked the nature she had before her eyes, particularly in the village in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence where she spent her summers. On canvas, she suggested skies studded with spots and points of light. ‘The secret,’ she wrote, ‘would be to capture on canvas each shape in its light, that is, at the precise moment when the light becomes the shape. It would be like seeing a rainbow in the middle of the night.’
Translation from : Alfred Pacquement,
Histoires naturelles : un regard sur la scène française,
Art Paris 2022, p. 38-39.
Jacqueline Lamba, atelier Bonne-Nouvelle
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