Henri Focillon

Henri Focillon (7 September 1881 – 3 March 1943) was a French art historian.

He was the son of the printmaker Victor-Louis Focillon.

He was Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon. Professor of Art History at the University of Lyon, at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, at the Sorbonne, at the Collège de France and then in the United States, where he went into exile and taught at Yale University. A poet, printmaker, and teacher, Henri Focillon formed generations of art historians including George Kubler. He remains best known for his works on medieval art, most of which were translated into English.

Partial bibliography

• Vie des formes (1934, "The Life of Forms")
• Éloge de la main
• Benvenuto Cellini

Medieval Art

• Art des sculpteurs romans (1932)
• Art d'occident 1 : Moyen Âge roman et gothique
• Art d'occident 2 : Moyen Âge gothique (1938)
• Moyen Age. Survivances et réveils (1943)
• Piero della Francesca (1951)
• L'An mil (1952)

Painting

• La peinture au XIXe et XXe siècles (1927-1928, "Painting in the 19th and 20th Centuries")
• De Callot à Lautrec: Perspectives de l’art français ("From Callot to Lautrec: Perspectives on French Art")

Prints

• Giovanni-Battista Piranesi (1918)

East Asia

• L'art bouddhique (1921, "Buddhist Art")
• Hokusai (1914)

External links

• Annamaria Ducci, Henri Focillon en son temps. La liberté des formes, traduction de Sara Longo, révisée par Elise Koering, Strasbourg, Presses universitaires de Strasbourg, 2021, ('Historiographie de l'art', 2).
• Works by or about Henri Focillon at Internet Archive
• Henri Focillon, 1881-1943 at classiques.uqac.ca
• Kubler, George (1945). "Henri Focillon, 1881-1943". College Art Journal. 4 (2): 71–74. JSTOR 772442.