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Delpech war reporter

Between December 1944 and August 1945, Jean Delpech worked as war correspondent for the periodical L’Armée Française au Combat. He followed the 7th African Hunters Regiment, crossing the Rhine with them in March 1945 and arriving in Germany. This is one of the largest of the artist’s corpuses conserved in the museum’s collections, with some 290 drawings on vellum paper, mostly in 21 x 27 cm format. The artist documented all aspects of the German campaign, including military life (equipment, weaponry, etc.) and civilian aspects (portraits of children, street scenes, etc.). Following his return to France, he creates a series of larger-format works in black ink, watercolour and crayon. These “synoptic works” recompose the campaign, summarising the main events experienced and including a number of motifs sketched in situ. Jean Delpech defended the parts left to the imagination: “Artists provide a more synoptic, well composed image, all the richer as it is transposed, imagined sometimes, but finally more accurate.”


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https://collectionjeandelpech.musee-armee.fr/en/themes-collection/delpech-war-reporter