User:Ateliers Hugo

Ateliers Hugo

The Ateliers Hugo are a family of French goldsmiths based in Aix-en-Provence in France specialised in the creation of artists' jewels created by François Hugo in 1933. They have collaborated with Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, André Derain, Jean Cocteau, Jean Arp, Dorothea Tanning, Roberto Matta, Salvador Dali, Arman, César, Ugo Rondinone, Eric Croes and Josh Sperling. They also worked with the greatest Haute-Couture designers of the 20th Century: Coco Chanel, Elsa Schiaparelli, Hermes, Rochas and many others.


 * 1) The Early Years - Francois Hugo
 * 2) The collaboration with Picasso and the other artists
 * 3) Taking over - Pierre Hugo
 * 4) The third generation - Nicolas Hugo

1. The Early Years - Francois Hugo

Francois Hugo was born in 1899 near Florence in Rovezzano, Italy. He is the great-grandson of Victor Hugo, famous French writer of the 19th century. Growing up in Paris with his older brother Jean Hugo who was a painter and a stage-designer most notably for Jean Cocteau. They became close friends of members of ‘Le Boeuf sur le Toit’, a surrealistic artistic group including Satie, Diaghilev, Cocteau, Aragon, Breton, Marcel Duchamp, Picabia to name but a few. During this period he also met Pablo Picasso, André Derain and Max Ernst who would remain his best friend from this group. Talented self-taught goldsmith, he decided to establish his workshop after having studied bookbinding in Paris and sheep breeding in Scotland where he studied the treatment and the use of wool in clothing. A vast panel of apprenticeship that led him to name his workshop: ‘Un atelier de rien’ - A Studio of Nothing. He would spend hours experimenting and inventing tools that are still used in the Ateliers Hugo nowadays.

From 1933, he becomes a full time goldsmith and opens his studio at 222 rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, he starts by honouring orders for churches most notably the construction of the Church of Assy and diverse projects around religious edifices. But the war arrives again and Francois has to leave Paris to Cannes. From there he will start the conception of Haute Couture buttons for Chanel, Hermes, Rochas, Schiaparelli with old electrical cables and different non noble metal as it was impossible for anyone to have access to gold or silver in those dark times. A collection of these pieces is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and in Musee Galliera in Paris. They have been exhibited around the world in major temporary exhibitions ever since.

'''2. The collaboration with Picasso and the other artists '''

The first experience of jewellery made with artists starts with Picasso in 1955. Francois Hugo now lives in Aix-en-Provence with his wife Monique Hugo and their three children: Martine, Pierre and Theodora.

Pablo Picasso is in Cannes and the master wants to experiment further than the ceramics that he has started with the help of Alain Ramie in Vallauris, France. Indeed, he has decided to start the project of silver plates made from the ‘Pâtes Blanches’ series that he had just made. For that matter he contacts his friend Douglas Cooper who reminds him of Francois Hugo, the young goldsmith he had met in Paris in 1917 at a Russian ballet along with Jean Cocteau. The two men knew each other but had not met since before WWII and from meeting again the whole project of Ateliers Hugo started.

Picasso and Hugo met several times to start their silversmith project and chose together at first 19 and then 24 Pates Blanches that would be good to silversmithing and to develop the technique of repoussé Francois Hugo had secretly developed and which would apply perfectly to this project of 20-50cm (8-20 inches) silver plates hammered against a bronze mould. It is because the two men were so completely on the same mind that, from a respective point of view, they managed to reach a level of perfection that is still unrivalled. Little by little, Francois Hugo realised that a new technique would apply to each object they were creating making the work even more unique. It was a new skill, a new side to his talent and Picasso was in total admiration of this and so was Francois Hugo of Picasso. Mutual admiration and friendship were the keys to the success of their enterprise. Therefore, in a matter of intimacy, he decided not to commercialise the plates at first and to keep them for himself in his house La Californie in Cannes. From the 1960s, numerous artists would want to collaborate with Hugo using this new technique of goldsmith. Max Ernst was the second artist to join in and to start a collaboration with Francois Hugo. The two men had known each other for more than twenty years before starting working together and it led to the creation of more than fifty different gold jewels and silver sculptures. It was then followed by Andre Derain, whom was the best man at Francois and Monique Hugo’s wedding and a fellow friend and artist with whom they would spend long nights in Paris together in their youth. The poetry of Jean Cocteau that Francois Hugo had met in 1917, the same night as he met Picasso at a Diaghilev Russian ballet in Paris, was one of the best collaboration as well for artists’ jewels that might have ever happened. Introducing the use of gems, thinner jewels with the use of casts and therefore a constant evolution of the technique since its beginnings. The inventiveness of Francois Hugo is limitless.

The financial resources sadly were not and the fact that most of the artists and most especially Picasso, didn’t want to commercialise the work didn’t help much the prosperity of the business until 1967. Indeed, it was with the help of Jean Hugues, director and founder of Galerie Le Point Cardinal in Paris, that the first show of artists’ jewels was ever made. Starring Pablo Picasso, Andre Derain, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, Viseux, Dorothea Tanning - it was the first time jewels were exhibited as art, as sculptures, in a way that had never been shown before and would revolutionise the definition and the approach of the public and collectors towards this particular side of the art world.

From this show, editions for each of the works were decided, the commercial aspect was born and collectors could start discovering but also acquiring these works made out of gold and silver in a small workshop in a house in the South of France by Francois Hugo and soon joined by his son Pierre Hugo.

3. Taking over - Pierre Hugo

Pierre Hugo was born in 1947 in Paris, France. He studied at Royal College of Art in London and joined the formation to become a goldsmith with his father from 1972. During these years of apprenticeship, Pierre Hugo learned all the techniques to become a professional goldsmith just like his father but he also started to develop the market and found more international clients that were eager to discover and to embrace art under this form.

With exhibitions in Munich, Amsterdam, Denver, Los Angeles, Geneva, Paris, London, New York, Tokyo, Sydney, Hong-Kong, Brussels and many more, the Ateliers Hugo have exhibited in the five continents of the World and their work is present in many permanent collections such as The Picasso Museums of Paris, Antibes and Barcelona, the Hakone Museum in Japan, the Boca Raton Museum of Art in Florida, USA or the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. All this, is the sole work of Pierre Hugo since the early seventies to nowadays.

Pierre Hugo has been in full charge of the Ateliers Hugo since 1981, year of his father’s passing and has developed many new collaborations with contemporary artists such as Cesar, Dali, Corneille, Arman, Rondinone and Croes perpetuating the tradition initiated by his father Francois Hugo to be at the service of the artists of their generation.

4. The third generation - Nicolas Hugo

For some years now, Pierre Hugo is progressively handing the reins of the Ateliers Hugo to his son Nicolas for a third generation of goldsmiths and art dealers specialised in the artists’ jewels. Nicolas Hugo was born in 1989, in Aix-en-Provence, in the house where his father and his grandfather have had the Ateliers Hugo since 1955.

Nicolas Hugo started his formation in the Ateliers Hugo to specialised himself in the artists’ jewels business and his apprenticeship to become a goldsmith following the steps of his father. The two men work together today and have numerous exhibitions lined up as well as a forthcoming collaboration with American rising contemporary art star Josh Sperling.