Collection: Irène Jacob

Irène Jacob was a French painter working in Paris in the 1950s whose practice occupied a fertile threshold between post-war abstraction and the dream logic of Surrealism. Her paintings, described by Le Monde in 1956 as populated by suggestions of insects, minerals and algae moving through dense, labyrinthine structures, drew on charged natural imagery — witches, nymphs, Medusas, sirens, sacred woods, strange marine forms — while remaining formally engaged with the dominant languages of contemporary abstraction.

Jacob exhibited at Galerie Furstenberg, which was run during this period by Simone Collinet, formerly Simone Breton, through whose programme Surrealist networks continued to circulate in 1950s Paris alongside figures including Man Ray, Toyen, E.L.T. Mesens and Endre Rozsda. Jacob's position within this milieu — neither straightforwardly historical Surrealism nor simply abstraction — makes her an artist whose work deserves considerably more attention.

This collection brings together exhibition invitations, catalogues and printed ephemera related to Irène Jacob and her exhibition history.