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, Focillon trained 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)
References
- Annamaria Ducci, Henri Focillon en son temps. La liberté des formes, translated by Sara Longo, revised by Elise Koering, Strasbourg, Presses Universitaires de Strasbourg, 2021, (Historiographie de l'art, 2).
- Works by or about Henri Focillon at the Internet Archive
- Henri Focillon, 1881-1943< at classiques.uqac.ca
- Kubler, George (1945). "Henri Focillon, 1881-1943". College Art Journal. 4 (2): 71–74. doi:10.1080/15436322.1945.10795082. JSTOR 772442.