American born in New York in 1909, Henri Goetz was naturalized French in 1949. He was 26 years old when he married the painter Christine Boumeester from Holland. He shared all his life long with her. He began his art studies in Harvard, then studied to the Central School of New York. Later, in Paris, he still learnt to the Jullian Academies, the Grande Chaumière and in the atelier of Amédée Ozenfant. His life and his friendships were rich, he was the friend of Arp, Picasso, Picabia, Hartung, Kandinsky and of so many others he liked.
He started engraving in 1940, and created new processes such as the carborundum (1970). Henri Goetz illustrated famous works. A great number of personal exhibitions -like in Paris – devoted his work. His painting carried traces of fantastic and hallucination. In these years, his painting was sensitive to the Surrealism contributions. He founded, with Raoul Ubac, the review “la main à plume” (1940-41). He painted abstracted canvases and his signs made thought of Soulages or Hartung ones.
Henri Goetz taught to the Ranson Academy, to the Grande Chaumière, to the elderly Academy Andre Lhote, before becoming, in 1969, professor of Painting and Engraving at the University of Vincennes.
He died in Nice, in 1989.
The Goetz-Boumeester Museum, in Villefranche-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes), displays about fifty works of each one of these two artists who bound their life.