Biography
Valentine Hugo (née Gross) was a French artist, illustrator and costume designer. Born in Boulogne-sur-Mer in 1887, she studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1907. She collaborated frequently with her husband, the artist Jean Hugo, on theatre and ballet designs, including work for Jean Cocteau productions and the Ballets Russes.
In 1927–28 she assisted Jean Hugo on the costumes for Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), executing designs that aimed to reflect the precision of medieval miniatures while using authentic fabrics. She later became associated with the Surrealist movement, exhibiting with them and producing illustrations and objects, before her death in Paris in 1968.
