Anatole Jakovsky

Who was Anatole Jakovsky?

Anatole Jakovsky was a French art critic who wrote substantially, collected widely, and established a museum in Nice for Naïve art, Musée international d'Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky.

Atole Jakovsky was born in Chişinău. In 1932, he moved from Romania to Paris. He met the secretary of Prokofiev who introduced him amongst the artistic colony of Montparnasse. There he developed a binding friendship with Jean Hélion and mingled with the abstract artists who revolved around Michel Seuphor and Joaquín Torres García.

Soon Anatole Jakovsky became an art critic focusing on the abstract painters and in particular the Abstraction "movement - Creation " of Auguste Herbin of whom he wrote the first monograph. His first papers are devoted to Calder, Arp, Delaunay, Hélion, Mondrian, Nicholson, Pevsner, Seligmann, Villon, Vulliamy, Braque, Picasso, Zadkine… All of whom become friends. He also maintained a very close relationship with Robert Delaunay. Together, in 1939, they created "The Keys of the Paving Stones", the first plastic book. It is a collection of poems signed "Anatole Delagrave", illustrated by Robert Delaunay and made of plates of rhodoïde fluorescent.