Jacqueline Debutler

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**Jacqueline Debutler (born October 7, 1928) is a French painter, printmaker, and sculptor who was active in the post-war French abstract art movement. Born in Compiègne, Oise, she grew up in a family that operated an industrial timber and sawmill business. She received her art education at the École des Beaux-Arts in Amiens, France, and began painting and printmaking at a young age.

Her early works are signed "Valérie Lacroix," a name derived from La Croix-Saint-Ouen, a village near Compiègne where her parents operated a sawmill. In 1957, she married Patrick Butler, a surgeon and hand specialist, in Amiens, and began using "Debutler" as her artistic name.

In 1967, she moved to Paris and joined the studio of printmaker Johnny Friedlaender, where she seriously studied the technique of copperplate etching. Friedlaender is known as an important leader in 20th-century European printmaking, having nurtured many international printmakers, and greatly influenced Debutler's printmaking.

While creating works based in her studio on Rue Courcelles in Paris, she also worked in the South of France, particularly creating works and holding exhibitions in La Garde-Freinet. In 1976, she was invited by a gallery in Grimaud to participate in an exhibition alongside Op Art master Victor Vasarely, and was active in the post-war French abstract art movement.

Her work is characterized by abstract expression through geometric composition and harmony of colors, and she has created works in diverse fields such as printmaking, painting, and sculpture. Her copperplate etchings, in particular, have received international acclaim, having been featured in the "Modern Graphics" exhibition of 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 works also achieved success in the United States, which sometimes led to her being mistaken for an American artist. Her friends and artists she interacted with included Jacques Rigaud, Gillou Brillant, Jacqueline Badord, and Olivier Descamps, and she sometimes participated in group exhibitions with them.

Currently, Jacqueline Debutler is recognized as one of the artists of post-war French abstract printmaking, and is positioned within theの流れ of French contemporary printmaking with her unique expression through geometric abstraction and color composition.