Jean-François Bauret

Jean-François Bauret (1932–2014) was a French photographer. He is principally remembered for his nudes and his advertising work. In both his commissions and his personal projects, he employs stripped-down compositions, presenting the bodies in a direct manner and playing with the contrasts of black and white. He is notably the author of a male nude as well as photographs of pregnant women deemed provocative at the time.

Early in his career, from 1959 onward, he also photographed numerous artists, famous or still little known to the general public, at their homes or in their studios. He thus records intimate moments with the same sense of composition and the same intention of showing “the individual as he is.”

Some portraits reflect more assertive formal explorations, as in the series devoted to 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 for whom at least one work is held in the collections of the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.

Jean-François Bauret’s work was shown for the first time at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris in 1971 in a monographic exhibition organized by the ARC section (Animation – Research – Confrontation).

The current display at the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris follows a donation to the museum by Mrs. Claude Bauret Allard, in 2017, of 80 prints.