Jack Youngerman is an artist known for his constructions and paintings.
Jack Youngerman was born in 1926 in St. Louis, Missouri, moving to Louisville, Kentucky in 1929 with his family. He studied art at the University of North Carolina from 1944 to 1946 under a wartime navy training program, and graduated from the University of Missouri in 1947. In the fall of 1947, Youngerman moved to Paris on a G.I. Scholarship; he enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts where he studied with Jean Souverbie. He traveled to the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Italy and Greece, to visit art museums and historic sites. In 1948 he formed a lifelong friendship with Ellsworth Kelly and also meets Eduardo Paolozzi and Cesar, each fellow students at Ecole des Beaux-Arts. In 1950 Youngerman married the French actress Delphine Seyrig (1932–1990).
That same year Youngerman had his first group exhibition, Les Mains eblouies at Galerie Maeght in Paris, which also included Pierre Alechinsky, Eduardo Chillida and Corneille. He visited the studios of Constantin Brancusi and Jean Arp with Kelly, and found himself influenced by their sense of organic form. He met Alexander Calder through his father-in-law, Henri Seyrig, a renown archaeologist and cultural attache to the Free French delegation to the United States. During this time he became interested in the resurgence of geometric abstraction in Paris, especially in exhibitions such as Salon des Realites Nouvelles which included Max Bill, Auguste Herbin and Richard Lohse. Youngerman also visited the Salon de Mai to see the most current work of the School of Paris artists, among them such masters as Henri Matisse.


More...