Jacques Pierre Dufrense
B. 1922

Jacques Dufrense was born in 1922 in Paris. He is the son and pupil of well-known painter Charles Dufrense. He studied at the École des Arts Appliqués from 1940 to 1941. The following year he studied with Robert Wlérick and Charles Despiau at  l’Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. In 1943 he began studying with Henri Laurens, whom he eventually befriended.

Dufrense was a member of the artist collective l’Échelle with Busse, Calmettes, Cortot and Michel Patrix. The group exhibited together between 1943 and 1948. Beginning in 1943, Dufrense showed at the Salon des Tuileries. He exhibited at the Salon de Mai beginning in 1945.

Early in his career Dufrense began modeling sculptural work in a post-cubist style, though by the late forties he abandoned this practice for abstract work created from wire. Dufrense later returned to more figurative work, carving sculptures from stone. Since the sixties he has cast figures in bronze and other metals. 

Dufrense’s sculptures are executed in the grandest tradition of the modernists which preceeded him.  Bold, expressive and unique, he has a large body of work that spans four decades.  He also designed sculptural furniture incorporating figures in a charming and whimsical manner.