French poet, art critic and draughtsman, born Édouard Petit on 8 August 1924 in Paris, died on 9 May 2006 in Paris. Founder of the review and movement Phases.
Life
In 1937 he discovered Surrealism and non-figurative painting, and in 1939 began to draw and write. His first poems appeared in 1943 in the semi-clandestine review La Main à plume. After the war he worked with Yves Bonnefoy on La Révolution la nuit and, in Brussels, on Christian Dotremont’s Les Deux Sœurs. From 1948 to 1951 he was the French editor of the review Cobra; in 1949 he co-founded the review Rixes with Max Clarac-Sérou and Jaroslav Serpan.
The end of Cobra and Rixes in 1951 led him to gather their artists around a new project, conceived with his wife, Anne Éthuin. The title Phases was chosen in 1953 and the first issue appeared in 1954. Around the review an international movement formed, bringing together young abstract painting and post-war Surrealism: Pierre Alechinsky, Camille Bryen, Corneille, Asger Jorn, Karl Otto Götz, Henri Goetz, Enrico Baj and many others. Jaguer coordinated its exhibitions and publications in many countries; Jacques Lacomblez established it in Belgium in 1956, and sister reviews were born in Malmö, Milan, Brussels and Buenos Aires.
From 1959 he drew close to André Breton and took part in the activities of the international Surrealist movement; with him he co-organised the exhibition “Surrealist Intrusion in the Enchanters’ Domain” in New York (1960). Phases moved away from it in 1963. In 1960 Jaguer signed the Manifesto of the 121 on the right to insubordination in the Algerian War. The review ceased publication in 1975, but the group continued its exhibitions and publications until its founder’s death.
The work
As a poet he published, among others, La Poutre creuse (1950), La Nuit est faite pour ouvrir les portes (1955), Le Mur derrière le mur (1958) and L’Envers de la panoplie (2000). As a critic he wrote Les Mystères de la chambre noire (Flammarion, 1983), devoted to Surrealist photography, Le Surréalisme face à la littérature (1989) and Cobra au cœur du XXe siècle (Galilée, 1997), as well as monographs on Alechinsky, Baj, Joseph Cornell, Lacomblez, Perahim, Oelze and Remedios Varo.
Exhibitions and collections
- At the gallery, 2024: his works were included in “Surrealist Prelude” (7 June to 6 July); a section “Édouard Jaguer and the international Phases movement” of the exhibition “At the Sources of Convulsive Beauty” (25 October to 30 November) brought together works by Guido Biasi, Jacques Lacomblez, Jules Perahim, Philip West and Ludwig Zeller
Looking back at their exhibitions
- Surrealist Prelude 2024