Jacqueline de Buttet
(born October 7, 1928) is a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who worked within the post-war French abstract art movement. She received her art education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Amiens, France, and began creating paintings and prints at a young age. Her early works are signed "Valérie Lacroix," a name derived from La Croix-Saint-Ouen, a village near Compiègne where she was born. In 1957, she married Patrick Butler, a surgeon and hand specialist in Amiens, and began using "Debutler" as her artist name.
In 1967, she moved to Paris and became an apprentice at the studio of printmaker Johnny Friedlaender, where she seriously studied the technique of copperplate etching. Friedlaender is known as an important mentor in 20th-century European printmaking, having nurtured many international printmakers, and he greatly influenced Debutler's printmaking.
While creating works from her studio on Rue des Couronnes in Paris, she also worked in the south of France, particularly in La Garde-Freinet, where she produced works and held exhibitions. In 1976, she was invited by a gallery in Grimaud to participate in an exhibition alongside Op Art master Victor Vasarely, active within the post-war French abstract art movement.
Her work is characterized by abstract expression through geometric composition and harmonious color, and she created in diverse fields such as printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Her copperplate prints, in particular, received international acclaim, being featured in the "Modern Graphics" exhibition at the World Bank Art Society in Washington D.C. in 1971, and also exhibited at the Contemporary Print Exhibition held at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 1973.
Her work also achieved success in America, often leading her to be mistakenly identified as an American artist. Her friends and artistic associates included Jacques Rigaud, Gillou Brillant, Jacqueline Badord, and Olivier Descamps, with whom she sometimes participated in group exhibitions.
Currently, Jacqueline Debutler is recognized as one of the artists of post-war French abstract printmaking, positioned within the current of French contemporary printmaking with her unique expression of geometric abstraction and color composition.