Seigle was the working name of a collaborative artist couple, comprising Marie Pin (1912-1998) – also known as Nô – and Henri Julien (1907- 1995). Together, over a period of more than 50 years, they created pictures in which the hand of neither artist is distinguishable. They signed their works Seigle.
Nô – and Henri first met in 1937. In the same year they were introduced to Victor Brauner (1903-1966), and following on from this André Breton – who invited them to join the Surrealist Group.
Breton wrote of them appreciatively – in one eulogy, MES AMIS SEIGLE, he described their collaboratiive work as: ….a hand as we have not yet seen, a man’s hand indistinguishable from a woman’s hand or, better, the hand; the hand of the woman and that of the man making only one by virtue of an agreement started for once so far that it involves the single intention and goes so far as to necessitate the pooling of the ‘expression. I think that we cannot insist enough on this exceptional representative of the art of Seigle in human value: the chance is given to us not only to apprehend the reactions of an individual sensitivity, however rich it is, in front of the “spectacle” of nature and its symbolic implications, which are far more important, but those of the couple who have best achieved sensitive fusion, because their elements have always lived side by side, shared the same childhood impressions and undergone the same training intellectually. In this way, a myth is finally imbued with tangible reality…..
Chronology:
January 16, 1907, Henri Julien is born in Saintes (Charente-Maritime). In Montauban, his friendship with Félix Bouisset, curator, enables him to study drawing for 5 years at the Musée Ingres.
1927 in Paris, he became the only pupil of Édouard Vuillard. He also attended the Schola Cantorum and worked with Vincent d’Indy for 10 years.
1933, he passed the competitive examination and entered the École des Arts décoratifs. Pupil of Legueult. Graduated from the École des Arts décoratifs in 1936.
1933 to 1939, earned a diploma from the École du Louvre with a thesis on Fragonard under Robert Rey and a diploma in museography.
1937, meeting with Marie Pin, born in 1912 in Cassagnoles (Gard). While studying at the Beaux-Arts and the Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie, she meets Henri during an exhibition at Shiffrin’s at the Pléiade. They decided to deepen their common interest in Surrealism and took the pseudonym of Seigle.
Henri and Nô Seigle met Victor Brauner, then André Breton, and joined the Surrealist Group following Benjamin Péret’s presentation of Henry Hathaway’s film, “Peter Ibbetson”. For André Breton, this film adaptation of Georges du Maurier’s “L’Amour fou” was a “prodigious film, a triumph of surrealist thought, being the only enterprise to exalt total love. This landmark was embodied in the Seigle couple (see letters from the Salon d’Automne).
In1940, the Seigle took care of Henri’s parents’ bookshop in Montauban, with one painting and the other running the bookshop in the morning, then reversing roles in the afternoon. This bookshop was also a literary circle frequented by René Huygues, André Chamson and the other curators of the Louvre who had retreated to the Ingres Museum during the Second World War, along with the whole world of jazz, Hugues Panassie and his famous guests from American jazz.
1946, they met André Malraux at the home of Jacques Jaugard, Director of Arts and Letters.
1947, Seigle is selected to exhibit at the Maeght Gallery on the occasion of the 2nd International Surrealist Exhibition.
After his surrealist period (1940 – 1952), Seigle returned to more figurative subjects: still lifes with fruit, jugs, ewers…, women, nudes, landscapes of Penne (Tarn) or Paris, bridges or barges on the Seine…
In the Surrealist group, they were closely associated with André Breton, Benjamin Peret, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, Michel Carrouges, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer and Victor Brauner.
The writers who surround them are Michel Butor, Jean Brun, Jean Suquet, Robert Le Bel, Patrick Walberg, Julien Gracq, Peyre de Mandiargues, Octavio Paz and André Chamson.
The poets they associated with are Jacques Dupin, Yves Bonnefoy and the American Nathaniel Tarn.
The painters with whom they were associated were Édouard Vuillard, Alberto Giacometti, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Henri Dubuffet and Serguei Charchoune.
They published in the Phases, Néon and La Nef magazines.
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Seigle was the working name of a collaborative artist couple, comprising Marie Pin (1912-1998) – also known as Nô – and Henri Julien (1907- 1995). Together, over a period of more than 50 years, they created pictures in which the hand of neither artist is distinguishable. They signed their works Seigle.
Nô – and Henri first met in 1937. In the same year they were introduced to Victor Brauner (1903-1966), and following on from this André Breton – who invited them to join the Surrealist Group.
Breton wrote of them appreciatively – in one eulogy, MES AMIS SEIGLE, he described their collaboratiive work as: ….a hand as we have not yet seen, a man’s hand indistinguishable from a woman’s hand or, better, the hand; the hand of the woman and that of the man making only one by virtue of an agreement started for once so far that it involves the single intention and goes so far as to necessitate the pooling of the ‘expression. I think that we cannot insist enough on this exceptional representative of the art of Seigle in human value: the chance is given to us not only to apprehend the reactions of an individual sensitivity, however rich it is, in front of the “spectacle” of nature and its symbolic implications, which are far more important, but those of the couple who have best achieved sensitive fusion, because their elements have always lived side by side, shared the same childhood impressions and undergone the same training intellectually. In this way, a myth is finally imbued with tangible reality…..
Chronology:
January 16, 1907, Henri Julien is born in Saintes (Charente-Maritime). In Montauban, his friendship with Félix Bouisset, curator, enables him to study drawing for 5 years at the Musée Ingres.
1927 in Paris, he became the only pupil of Édouard Vuillard. He also attended the Schola Cantorum and worked with Vincent d’Indy for 10 years.
1933, he passed the competitive examination and entered the École des Arts décoratifs. Pupil of Legueult. Graduated from the École des Arts décoratifs in 1936.
1933 to 1939, earned a diploma from the École du Louvre with a thesis on Fragonard under Robert Rey and a diploma in museography.
1937, meeting with Marie Pin, born in 1912 in Cassagnoles (Gard). While studying at the Beaux-Arts and the Institut d’Art et d’Archéologie, she meets Henri during an exhibition at Shiffrin’s at the Pléiade. They decided to deepen their common interest in Surrealism and took the pseudonym of Seigle.
Henri and Nô Seigle met Victor Brauner, then André Breton, and joined the Surrealist Group following Benjamin Péret’s presentation of Henry Hathaway’s film, “Peter Ibbetson”. For André Breton, this film adaptation of Georges du Maurier’s “L’Amour fou” was a “prodigious film, a triumph of surrealist thought, being the only enterprise to exalt total love. This landmark was embodied in the Seigle couple (see letters from the Salon d’Automne).
In1940, the Seigle took care of Henri’s parents’ bookshop in Montauban, with one painting and the other running the bookshop in the morning, then reversing roles in the afternoon. This bookshop was also a literary circle frequented by René Huygues, André Chamson and the other curators of the Louvre who had retreated to the Ingres Museum during the Second World War, along with the whole world of jazz, Hugues Panassie and his famous guests from American jazz.
1946, they met André Malraux at the home of Jacques Jaugard, Director of Arts and Letters.
1947, Seigle is selected to exhibit at the Maeght Gallery on the occasion of the 2nd International Surrealist Exhibition.
After his surrealist period (1940 – 1952), Seigle returned to more figurative subjects: still lifes with fruit, jugs, ewers…, women, nudes, landscapes of Penne (Tarn) or Paris, bridges or barges on the Seine…
In the Surrealist group, they were closely associated with André Breton, Benjamin Peret, Marcel Duchamp, Georges Bataille, Michel Carrouges, Max Ernst, Hans Bellmer and Victor Brauner.
The writers who surround them are Michel Butor, Jean Brun, Jean Suquet, Robert Le Bel, Patrick Walberg, Julien Gracq, Peyre de Mandiargues, Octavio Paz and André Chamson.
The poets they associated with are Jacques Dupin, Yves Bonnefoy and the American Nathaniel Tarn.
The painters with whom they were associated were Édouard Vuillard, Alberto Giacometti, Nicolas de Staël, Hans Hartung, Henri Dubuffet and Serguei Charchoune.
They published in the Phases, Néon and La Nef magazines.
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+ Share Artist
