Softcover. Paris / London, Paul Holberton, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 216 pages in color. Jean Helion (1904-1987) became a leading member of the international Abstraction-Creation group in the early 1930s. He then took abstraction to New York, where he advised the avant-garde collector A. E. Gallatin on purchases for his Gallery of Living Art, a crucial influence on the early phases of the developing New York School. In France after World War II, however, he evolved a unique language of painting, employing people and objects that are both contructivist and naturalistic--his own language of signs populated by shop-window dummies, newspaper readers, and startling nudes. In his return to figuration he may be compared to his close friends Balthus and Alberto Giacometti, even though his style is unique. This book is the first in English on the artist for some thirty years. Mild crease to front cover, otherwise a clean, bright copy. DOMESTIC SHIPPING ONLY.