Departures of note

Anatole Jakovsky, born in Chișinău to a Polish father and Romanian mother, moved from Romania to Paris in 1932. Introduced to the Montparnasse artistic colony, he befriended abstract painters like Jean Hélion and wrote early monographs on figures such as Auguste Herbin, Calder, and Mondrian. In 1939, he collaborated with Robert Delaunay on 'The Keys of the Paving Stones,' a collection of poems under the pseudonym Anatole Delagrave, illustrated with fluorescent rhodoïde plates—his only use of a pseudonym.

In 1942, while helping the naïve painter Jean Fous unpack, Jakovsky discovered canvases by the Douanier Rousseau in a portfolio case. This encounter redirected his career: he devoted himself to defending and collecting naïve art, publishing his first major work on the subject in 1949. Over the following decades, he organized international exhibitions and amassed a significant collection, which he donated to the city of Nice in 1978. Four years later, the Musée international d'Art naïf Anatole Jakovsky opened in the Castle of Sainte-Hélène, preserving over 600 works tracing naïve art from the 17th century onward.

Beyond naïve painting, Jakovsky wrote the first biography of Gaston Chaissac, explored the history of tobacco and pipes, and maintained a correspondence with the artist Jean-Joseph Sanfourche. He also claimed to have foreseen the moon landing and predicted World War II as early as 1935, though these assertions remain unverified.