Baterbys Art Auction Gallery - Bios

Valentine Hugo
(1897-1968) Valentine Hugo was born in a city in northern France called Boulogne-sur-Mer. Hugo studied painting in Paris, and in 1919 married French illustrator Jean Hugo (1894-1984), whose grandfather was the famous French poet, Victor Hugo. She collaborated with Jean on ballet designs including Jean Cocteau’s Maries de la Tour Eiffel (1921), and in 1926 executed 24 wood engravings after maquettes by Jean Hugo for Romeo and Juliette. She met the surrealists around 1928 and actively participated in the movement between 1930 and 1936. The foremost illustrator of Paul Éluard’s (a founder of surrealism) work, she first exhibited with the surrealists in the Salon des Sur Independants of 1933. A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Centre Culturel Thibaud de Champagne, Troyes, in 1977. Other exhibitions of her work have been at: Tenerife (1935), Copenhagen (1935), New York (1937),and Tokyo (1937.)