Jacques Hérold

Jacques Herold was born Herold Blumer on 10 October 1910 in Piatra Neamt, Romania. Around 1925, against his father's wishes, he entered the School of Fine Arts (Scoala Nationala de Arte Frumoase) in Bucharest, studying under Ion Theodorescu-Sion. He left the school in 1929 without completing a degree and worked for a time as an architectural draftsman.

Around 1930 he moved to Paris, adopted the name Jacques Herold, and joined Andre Breton's Surrealist group, forming close ties with Yves Tanguy, Victor Brauner, and Constantin Brancusi. During the Second World War, while in Marseille, he contributed to the Surrealist Jeu de Marseille playing-card project (1941). He broke with the Surrealist group in 1951, and his subsequent work moved toward lyrical abstraction and tachisme.

Herold received the Copley Foundation Prize in 1958, the same year he had exhibitions at the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris and at the Tate Gallery in London. In 1972 the Abbaye de Royaumont mounted a monographic exhibition of his work. In 1986, one year before his death, he exhibited at the XLII Venice Biennale. Jacques Herold died on 11 January 1987 in Paris, at age 76. A centenary retrospective was held at the Musee Cantini in Marseille in 2011.

Herold is consistently framed by museums and dealers as a central, if later-arriving, figure in the Surrealist movement, valued for the transition in his work from biomorphic figuration to mineral and crystalline forms, and eventually to lyrical abstraction. His inclusion in the Salon d'Automne from 1936, his participation in the Jeu de Marseille project during the war, and his acceptance into Breton's inner circle are cited as evidence of his standing within the movement. Later institutional recognition, including the 1958 Copley Foundation Prize, exhibitions at the Tate Gallery and the Musee d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and his appearance at the 1986 Venice Biennale, is treated as confirmation that his reputation extended beyond the Surrealist group itself. No verbatim critical assessment from a named critic in a major outlet could be confirmed for this profile, so none is quoted here.

Herold's market is thin and not centrally documented. No single gallery or estate representative publicly identifies itself as his exclusive dealer; his work is actively handled by dealers including Olivier Malingue and Nahum Gallery, and circulates more broadly through marketplaces such as Galerie Arenthon and Artsy, alongside the family-connected Thessa Herold gallery in Paris. Market notes describe 1930s paintings estimated around EUR 50,000 to 100,000 and bronze sculptures commonly estimated above EUR 150,000. The highest price reported for his work is EUR 354,000 for the plaster sculpture Le Grand Masturbateur, sold in 2019; the auction house, city, and exact sale date for that result are not confirmed in publicly available sources, so this figure should be treated as a reported high rather than a fully documented record.

There is no confirmed catalogue raisonne for Jacques Herold, and no single gallery or estate publicly holds exclusive representation, so provenance research should draw on the family archive, the historical dealers who have handled his estate, and museum records. Pieces are typically signed J. Herold or J Herold, and the name appears in the market both with and without the accent on Herold, all referring to the same artist; buyers should treat these as spelling variants rather than distinct signatures. Public auction data for Herold is limited, and the widely cited high of EUR 354,000 for a 2019 sculpture sale lacks a confirmed auction house and date, so it should be treated as directional rather than a fully verified benchmark.