French painter and writer. In 1921 he moved to Paris and studied at the École des Arts Décoratifs. In 1925, he left his job and concentrated exclusively on painting which initially meant, basically, still lifes and figures. At the end of the 20's, he met Joaquín Torres Garcia who introduced him to Cubist and Abstract ideas. In 1929, Hélion painted his first abstract painting and co-founded the group and newspaper Arte Concreta with Theo van Doesburg. His first one-man show took place at the Pierre Gallery in Paris, 1932. In 1939, he produced his final abstract compositions and returned to figurative painting. In 1971, he had his first major retrospective at the Grand Palais in Paris. During the final phase of his activity, between 1982 and 1983, Jean Hélion again took up the themes approached in previous works in order to produce a series of paintings which he called Remakes. In this period, he had a number of retrospective exhibitions, namely at the Museum of Modern Art in Strasbourg, at the Lenbachhaus in Munich, at the Guggenheim Museum in Venice and, in 1995, at the Musée d'Unterlinden in Colmar.
