- He is known for his artwork, as well as for inventing the carborundum printmaking process.
- When he was eighteen, he left home to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied to be an electrical engineer. However, he started taking evening art classes and began to devote his summer vacations to painting instead of apprenticeship.
- In 1968 he accepted a teaching position at École des Beaux-Arts, but the school was closed due to student strikes two weeks later. He then moved to work at Paris 8 University, where he taught painting and etching classes.
- In 1945, after returning from Cannes to Paris from several years working with the French Resistance forging documents, Goetz worked with René Guilly on a national radio program called The World of Paris. Raoul Ubac covered poetry, and Goetz covered painting.
- Goetz and his wife had long worked together to illustrate several books with their etchings. Christine had taken classes in the subject before World War II at the Académie des Beaux-Arts, and had taught Goetz. They collaborated on Georges Hugnet's book, La femme facil, as well as other books. After seeing some of their lithographs, a friend of theirs encouraged them to etch full-time. Johnny Friedlaender gave them a small printing press that he no longer used, and Fin, Pablo Picasso's nephew, helped them modify it. Christine focused mostly on lithography, while Goetz focused mostly on etching. They also helped design silk screens.
- He later described his mother as a "quasi-academic" because of the two large parenting books she owned. He began drawing because the books told that a child needs a certain number of hours outside in a day, and as such he was not allowed to come home before six. On one rainy day, he made use of his time by drawing. However, he was frustrated with his clumsy drawing, and tore it up.
- In addition to his carborundum printing research, Goetz undertook extensive research on pastels.
- While attending classes in Fogg Museum, he realized he wanted to be an artist. He left Harvard the next year to attend the Grand Central School of Art in New York City, where he enrolled in morning, evening, and night classes.
- In 1939, Goetz, Christian Dotremont, and Raoul Ubac created La Main à Plume, the first surrealist publication under the Occupation.
- After being hospitalized for an illness, Goetz committed suicide by jumping from the fifth floor of the hospital, dying in Nice, France.
- The day after arriving in Paris, Goetz began in 1930 attending the Académie Colarossi, aiming to split his time between the studios there and those at the Académie Julian and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. He also frequented the Montparnasse art studios, including the studio of Amédée Ozenfant. He was not interested in formal training, instead looking for somewhere to paint. He began by painting portraiture and studying the nude figure. He stayed in Paris for two years, only returning home once to collect his belongings after deciding to stay in France permanentl.
- In July, 1930, he decided to leave America to go to Paris, using money he had saved working as a golf caddie and as an apprentice electrical engineer.
- In September 1935, Goetz met Christine Boumeester at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. Christine was a very shy Dutch painter from Java, Indonesia. Goetz invited her to visit his studio, and she moved in with him several days later.
- Workin with the French Resistance, the group made false documents for a Czech poet who, upon being caught by the German authorities, told them of the surrealists who would be meeting in a few days. The group was arrested, although Goetz was not among them. However, Raoul Ubec was arrested, and the authorities found a note from Goetz detailing instructions on forging identity cards. For this, as well as for Goetz's American nationality, he and his wife Christine were forced to flee to Côte d'Azur. Goetz was forced to take on such jobs as cutting sandstone.
- In 1934, Goetz met Victor Bauer, an Austrian artist. Bauer taught Goetz of the existence of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Georges Rouault. Bauer also taught Goetz about left-wing politics, Sigmund Freud's ideology, and avant-garde poetry and music. Through Bauer, he was able to show his first painting in a show in London.
- In 1947, Goetz became the subject of a short film by Alain Resnais for the Musée National d'Art Moderne entitled Portrait de Henri Goetz. Goetz showed the film to Gaston Diehl, leading Diehl to commission Resnais to create the film Van Gogh in the following year. Resnais went on to win an Academy Award in 1950 for the Best Short Subject, Two-reel film for Van Gogh.
- Goetz was a French American surrealist painter and engraver.
- As World War II began, both Goetz and his wife worked with the French Resistance. They printed leaflets on a simple printing press and created posters to paste on walls around Paris. However, they primarily worked to forge identity documents.
- In 1949, Goetz began to teach a painting class. The class grew so large that he had to move it to the Académie Ranson. After five years of teaching there, he taught for another five years at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, eventually running two classes due to the number of pupils. He taught at many other schools before finally founding the Académie Goetz. He never charged money for his lessons.
- In 1938, Henri Goetz painted with tempera and an egg-based painting technique on photographic reproductions of historic masterpieces, as if in a posthumous collaboration with the masters. André Breton discovered the works in 1939 and called them "corrected masterpieces". These paintings were not exhibited until 1975, when they were shown for the first time at the Galerie Jean-Claude Bellier in Paris.
- In 1968, La gravure au carborundum, a treatise on carborundum printing, was published by the Maeght Gallery. It was prefaced by Joan Miró. Goetz created many abstract prints using this method. Other artists such as Antoni Clavé, Antoni Tàpies, and in particular, Joan Miró, employed carborundum printing in their work. The technique has since been used by printmakers around the world.
- The total body of his engraved work is estimated at around 650 prints. The Department of Prints and Photography at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France ("National Library of France") has the largest collection of such works with a total of 425 prints made using various techniques-burin engravings, etching, lithography and serigraphy.
- He credited his wife Christine with much of his early development from realism to his more modern surrealist painting style. Around this time he met Hans Hartung, who introduced him to his circle of friends. Through this, he met Fernand Léger and Wassily Kandinsky.
- In 1970, Goetz became a member of the "1% commission" in favour of the decoration of public buildings.
- Goetz was trained as an engineer and had a natural curiosity for the sciences. It was during an experiment that he discovered that carborundum was resistant to heat and pressure.
- In 1968, his wife Christine became ill. She lived with her illness for three years, before dying in Paris on January 10, 1971. After her death, he came across a number of her journals, which he published in a book called Christine Boumeester's notebooks. He prefaced the book.
- Citing a lack of patience and methodical ways, Goetz invented carborundum printmaking in the 1960s.
- Henri Goetz was made a Chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et Lettres in 1967.
- The Musée Goetz-Boumeester was created in 1983 in Villefranche-sur-Mer, France. The museum houses a donation of some fifty works by Christine Boumeester and as many by Henri Goetz, as well as some works from their collection created by their friends-Picasso, Picabia, Miró and Hartung.
- After enrolling at Harvard University to study Art History in 1929, Goetz left just a year later to take painting classes at the Grand Central School of Art in New York. It was there that his fellow students told him about their experiences in Paris, inspiring the young artist to move to France.
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