Romanian-born French painter, sculptor and illustrator, born Herold Blumer on 10 October 1910 in Piatra Neamț (Romanian Moldavia), died on 11 January 1987 in Paris.
Life
Born into a Jewish family, he spent most of his childhood in Galați, a port on the Danube. From 1925 to 1927 he studied at the École des beaux-arts in Bucharest, against his father’s wishes. In 1928 he discovered Surrealism through the young poets of the review Unu, who published his first drawings alongside those of Victor Brauner.
He reached Paris by sailing up the Danube, in 1929 according to Alain Jouffroy, in 1930 according to other sources, and took the name Jacques Hérold. He worked for Constantin Brâncuși, cooking for him, and met Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and James Joyce in his studio. Introduced to Yves Tanguy, who became a friend, he joined André Breton’s group through him, took part in its games and spent time with Brauner and Giacometti.
His first solo exhibition took place in 1947, the year of the International Surrealist Exhibition. He left Breton’s group in 1951. In 1958 he published Maltraité de peinture and received the Copley Foundation prize the same year. The Tate Gallery exhibited his work in 1959, the Abbaye de Royaumont devoted a monographic exhibition to him in 1972, and he took part in the Venice Biennale in 1986.
The work
During his Surrealist period, Hérold sought to connect pictorial representation with the world of crystal. His sculpture Le Grand Transparent (1946-1947) combines bronze, mirror and quartz crystals. After 1951 his painting moved towards an abstraction linked to Lyrical Abstraction and Tachism. He illustrated or designed the covers of more than eighty books, by Gherasim Luca, Tristan Tzara and Sade, among others. He said:
“Painting is like love: it can only be done in intimacy.” (Jacques Hérold)
Exhibitions and collections
- Loans from the gallery: Le Grand Transparent, 1946-1947, bronze, mirror and quartz crystals, 183 x 92 x 53 cm, no. 1/6, Susse foundry cast 1971, signed on the base, shown in “À flanc d’abîme : surréalisme et alchimie” (Maison André Breton and Espace Rignault, Saint-Cirq-Lapopie, 2023), then in “Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100” (Philadelphia Museum of Art, November 2025-February 2026)
- Public collections: Centre Pompidou, Paris (Le rouge en flamme, le noir en voûte, 1947); Musée d’Art moderne de Paris; Musée Cantini, Marseille; Musée d’Art moderne de Céret; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels; Israel Museum, Jerusalem