Vintage French American Artist Jean Marie Hassle signed Collage with Drawing, SLR, dated 1974, 28 x 39 1/2"
From Askart: Jean Marie Haessle was born in 1939 in Alsace, France. He discovered art in a book on impressionism while hospitalized for life threatening illnesses at age 17. An autodidact he learned his craft by copying the masters (Cezanne, Van Gogh, Gaugin) and, for a while, life drawing in Paris. His usually large abstract paintings are characterized by his native French color sense allied to an American expressivity acquired through his lifelong living and working in New York.
In 2011 he became an US citizen.
At age 14, he was apprentice and then mechanic in the Salt mines of Alsace. At 17, after his illness, he studied and became a technical draftsman and got to work in the blue prints offices in the Mines until he was drafted in the military at 21.
He spend 30 months in the Army, half of this time at the French command headquarters in Baden Baden, Germany and the 2nd half in Algiers during the Franco-Algerian war. He was released from the Army in mid-1962. In April 1997, he was awarded the medal " Medaille d'Afrique du Nord" for services rendered during the war.
After his release from the Army, he went back to work as a draftsman in the mines in Alsace. Until he moved to Paris in 1964 he started to draw and paint by copying impressionist masters from books images.
In Paris he finally saw for the first time art in museums and galleries. During this time he worked, mostly on expressionistic abstract works in oil on paper, for lack of money and space in his seven-floor walk-up rented room. He subsided by doing odd jobs, architectural draftsman, hotel night watch, etc. His work was influenced by the Cobra group artists, Alechinsky, Appel, Asger Jorn and also by Dubuffet, Giacometti, Miro, but most of all by Impressionists masters, Monet, Van Gogh and Cezanne.
He married an American in 1967 and moved with her to New York City the same year. To make a living, the first years, he did freelance work as paste-up-mechanicals for commercial art studios, including Columbia records, The New York Times, Money Magazine as well as others. He slowly started to show his work in galleries in the US and France and since the late 80's, he is only concentrating his time on making art.
After moving a few times, always in Manhattan, in 1974 he moved to Spring Street in Soho. At that time there where but a dozen galleries in Soho, but, by the mid-80's it had turned into a world-wide art center. He met artists Keith Haring and Jean Basquiat and became friends with French artists, Bernar Venet and Arman. He also participated in group shows and had his third one-person show in the Westbroadway gallery in 1972. To date, he still lives and works on Spring Street.
In the mid-80's he worked for periods in France (Paris, Lyon, and Cannes). In the late 90's he worked in Mexico (San Miguel de Allende) where he had a one person show in 1997 in the Museo de Art in Queretaro. In recent years, he had numerous shows in Korea and Japan. He had a survey show of the last 30 years of his work at the Korean University Museum, Seoul, Korea in spring 2014.
Catalogues 1985 Renold Kerr Gallery, New York, NY USA Text by David Shaff1989 Galerie Jade, Colmar France. The primary paintings of Haessle by Frederick Ted Castle. Introduction by Jean-Yves Bainier1994 Chateau du Grand Jardin, Joinville France. In memory of the body Text by David Shapiro. Interview by Marc Vaudey. In French/English .1994 Chateau du Grand Jardin, Joinville France. Edition of 200 exemplary1995 Centre Europeen d'Action Artistiques Contemp., Strasbourg , France Text by Gilbert Lascault. Interview by Jean-Yves Bainier Hard cover. In French and English.1995 HAESSLE 30 ans de peinture. Monography 145 pages with 70 pages Full color reproductions. Editions AU MEME TITRE Paris France. Text by David Shaff, David Shapiro, Jean-Yves Bainier. Interview by Catherine Ulmer. In French and English.2008 Haessle, Selected works, M magazine, 15 pages all colors reproductions2012 Haessle, Paintings, Hillwood Art Museum, LIU Post NY. Text by Jonathan Goodman (English), Bernard Zurcher (French) 52 pages, 35 colors reproductions2014 Haessle Paintings, 1983-2013, Korea University Art Museum. Text by Jonathan Goodman (English, Korean) Robert Morgan (English) Lee Ihnbum (Korean, English) 100 pages all reproductions in colors. Hard cover

28 x 39.5 in

10 lb