1925 — 1946

Jeanne Bucher

Founder


The Galerie Jeanne Bucher
with Jeanne Bucher (1925 — 1946)

The gallery, founded in 1925 by Jeanne Bucher, was one of the most vivid artistic centers in Paris between the period of great ferment in the mid-1920s and the end of the Second World War, presenting without compromise all the trends whether they were cubist, post-cubist, surrealist, primitivist or abstract.

Initially established in 1923 in the foreign library that Jeanne Bucher created aside the boutique of her friend Pierre Chareau, the gallery represented Picasso, Masson, Gris, Max Ernst, Arp, Lurçat, de Chirico, Bauchant, Lipchitz and Mondrian. In 1929, she expanded and relocated to 5 rue du Cherche-Midi. Within that new space, Jeanne Bucher defended young artists who would become major figures in the history of Twentieth Century art such as Giacometti and Vieira da Silva and took care of the promotion of Torres-García, Masson and Lipchitz.

For almost three years beginning in 1935, Jeanne Bucher was associated with Marie Cuttoli at 9ter boulevard du Montparnasse and exhibited, under the name “Galerie Jeanne-Bucher Myrbor”, Kandinsky, Dufy, Léger, Fontana, Man Ray, Tanguy and Freundlich. While placing the artists that she defended within the collections of great international institutions such as the MoMA, the Guggenheim, the Musée national d’art moderne of Paris and the Stedelijk Museum, Jeanne Bucher produced important work as art publisher. The editions published by Jeanne Bucher associated cubist and surrealist artists like Picasso, Max Ernst, Man Ray, Miró, Marcoussis, Bellmer and Tanguy with poets Tzara, Eluard and Hugnet.

During the war, the last period of her life, she concentrated her energy on the protection and the promotion of oppressed creators like Lipchitz, Kandinsky and Miró, and presented the new trends in abstraction such as Nicolas de Staël, Lanskoy and Bazaine.

In 1946, she returned from New York with works from unknown American artists like Tobey, Motherwell and Avery with the intention of presenting them in Paris, but she passed away on November 1st, 1946. What better spokesman than her friend Christian Zervos to extol the ensemble of her merits: “Her instincts led her to each talent likely to move everything in her heart and to animate her spirit. Art was for her like a battlefield where she would give the best of her strength.”