Jean-François Bauret

Jean-François Bauret (1932-2014) is one of the best-known French photographers of his generation. He is chiefly remembered for his nudes and his advertising work. Whether responding to commissions or pursuing personal projects, he employs stripped-down compositions, showing bodies directly and playing on the contrasts of black and white. He is notably the author of a male nude as well as pictures of pregnant women considered provocative at the time.

From the start of his career, from 1959 onwards, he also photographed many artists, some famous and others unknown to the wider public, at home or in their studios.

He thus captured moments of intimacy with the same sense of composition and the same desire to show 'the individual as he is'.

Some portraits reflect more assertive formal experiments, as in the series devoted to the painter Geneviève Asse, while in others it is the brushes or palettes that stand in for the artist and embody them.

The portraits presented in this room all depict artists of whom at least one work is held in the collections of the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris.

Jean-François Bauret's work was first shown at the Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris in 1971, in a monographic exhibition organised by the ARC section (Animation – Recherche – Confrontation).

The current display follows the generous donation to the museum by Madame Claude Bauret Allard, in 2017, of 80 prints.