UVA Fralin Museum of Art Features French Artist Jacques Villon

You've probably heard of the artist Marcel Duchamp—the man who famously (or perhaps infamously) submitted a urinal titled Fountain to the French Society of Independent Artists as a challenge to the common definition of art—but you may be less familiar with his older brother, Jacques Villon.

Villon, born Emile Méry Frédéric Gaston Duchamp in Haute-Normandie, France, set out to pursue a law degree at la Sorbonne, but was soon spending more time on his cartoons than on his studies. Once he committed to art in earnest, he devoted his time to painting and printmaking, as well as the etching and engraving he had enjoyed since adolescence. His early career features an impressionistic style influenced by Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but his later and more notable pieces are more abstract; the mathematical take on cubism that he and his friends of the Puteaux Group developed marked a new direction for the style.

A small collection of Villon’s cubist prints are now on display at the University of Virginia’s Fralin Museum of Art. The exhibition, which also features the abstract prints of Stanley William Hayter, will last until December 21, 2014.

Admission to the Fralin is free, though donations are welcome. Galleries are open Tuesday-Sunday 12-5, and on Final Fridays 5:30-7:30.