SwissArtGallery · Documented identity
The French painter, illustrator and lithographer Jean Deyrolle is distinguished by a career marked by the transition from figuration to its abandonment: initially committed to a synthetic form of painting informed by Paul Sérusier and the Nabis, he reports that his encounter with César Domela was decisive in this evolution. Born in 1911 and died in 1967, he belonged by family to an artistic milieu: he was the grandson of the painter Théophile Deyrolle and the great-nephew of Alfred Guillou. In 1928, he enrolled at the Art et Publicité school on rue de Fleurus in Paris, then took up painting as a self-taught artist. His meeting with the critic Charles Estienne in 1938 led to a friendship.
In his first, figurative period, Sérusier’s influence is evident in particular in his use of areas of flat colour and in a synthetic approach to reality. Deyrolle dates his meeting with Domela to 1942, at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher, and considers it the decisive factor in his renunciation of a form of figuration that had become useless. His work also included the production of several designs for tapestries woven by the Tabard workshop. Awarded the Kandinsky Prize in 1946, he worked in Gordes, in the Vaucluse, which he discovered the following year.
A retrospective was devoted to him at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1956; this was followed, among other exhibitions, by a solo show at the Galerie Charles Lienhard in Zurich in June 1960, and a presentation at the SDS Hallen in Malmö in March 1961. In 1959, he became a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Works are recorded in the collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York and in several Paris institutions, including the Musée national d’Art moderne. The Musée des Beaux-Arts de Quimper holds Équilibre, an oil on canvas measuring 73 × 60 cm. The documented works also include D’un Bijou rose et noir No. 44, dated 1945 and described as a signed oil on canvas measuring 65.5 × 81.5 cm; this lot sold for CHF 3,600, excluding fees.
This profile brings together identity references for Jean-Jacques Deyrolle and paintings, drawings and works on paper documented in auction catalogues.
Germann · Artcurial Beurret Bailly Widmer · Piguet · Ketterer
References include catalogue entries and available results; they do not all represent completed sales. Attributed works and special lots are excluded from the priced results.
Oil on canvas
Goyesca ou D'un bijou rose et noir, 1946–47
huile sur toile
Catalogue period : 2026-06-24
Published result : 3811 CHF
Including buyer’s premium
Estimate : CHF 3000–5000
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Oil on canvas
Hans-Henning, 1957
huile sur toile
Catalogue period : 2018-06-20
Published result : 16801 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 7000–9000
View the lot at the auction house ↗Tempera over pencil on cardboard
Composition abstraite
Tempera sur crayon, sur carton
Auction date : 2002-03-23
Published result : 920 EUR
Including buyer’s premium
Estimate : 500
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Oil on canvas
D'un Bijou rose et noir No. 44, 1945
Öl auf Leinwand.
Date to be documented
Catalogue reference — sale not confirmed
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Pastel
Composition
pastel
Catalogue period : 2019-05-22
Published result : 850 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 400–600
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Oil on canvas
"Bazille"
huile sur toile
Catalogue period : 2019-05-22
Published result : 2800 CHF
Fees not specified in the available data
Estimate : CHF 600–800
View the lot at the auction house ↗SwissArtGallery documentary note based on the cited sources. Titles, media and qualifications are provided in the profile language; the original catalogue wording remains available in each record.
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