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Anatole JakovskyFrench art historian, collector and artist
Date of Birth: 31.08.1907
Country:  France |
Content:
Birth and Early Life
Anatole Jakovsky was born on August 31 (Old Style) 1907, in Chișinău, Bessarabia. His father, Jan Władysław Jakowski, was of Polish descent and served as the secretary of the Chișinău City Council. His mother, Zinaida Jakovskaya, was of Moldovan origin.
Education
From 1921 to 1925, Jakovsky attended Russian Gymnasium Schumacher in Chișinău. He pursued architecture in Prague and studied at the Polytechnical Institute in Germany from 1928 to 1929. On July 12, 1932, he arrived in Paris.
Artistic Career
In Paris, Jakovsky became associated with abstract artist Jean Hélion and joined a group of artists formed around Michel Seuphor and Joaquín Torres García in Montparnasse. He gained prominence as an art critic specializing in abstract art and published a monograph on Auguste Herbin soon after. Jakovsky's numerous publications focused on artists such as Alexander Calder, Jean Arp, Robert Delaunay, Hélion, Piet Mondrian, Ben Nicholson, Antoine Pevsner, Kurt Seligmann, Jacques Villon, Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, and Ossip Zadkine.
Naïve Art Advocacy
During the Second World War, Jakovsky fled to Nice, where he met Jean Fou and developed an interest in naïve art. After the war, he dedicated himself to promoting naïve art through exhibitions, book publications, and collecting works by contemporary primitive artists. In 1978, he donated over 600 works to his museum, the Musée International d'Art Naïf Anatole Jakovsky, which opened in Nice in 1982.
Other Interests
Jakovsky's interests extended beyond naïve art to include Gaston Chaissac, about whom he published a monograph; Alphonse Allais, whose name he brought back from obscurity in the postwar years; and the history of tobacco production and collecting tobacco pipes and objets d'art.
Legacy
Anatole Jakovsky passed away and was buried with his wife, Renée Jakovsky-Frère (1910-1999), in the Jewish section of the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.
