Jacqueline Lamba, the second daughter of José Lamba and Jane Pinon, is born on November 17 in Saint Mandé.
With her mother and sister Huguette, Jacqueline Lamba joins her father , an agricultural engineer working in Cairo, in Egypt. She is brought up as the boy her parents had hoped for.
José Lamba meets a tragic death in a car accident at Heliopolis. Jane and her two daughters have to return to France. Jacqueline is sent to boarding school in Neuilly and Versailles. She takes art classes, and visits the exhibitions of the Galiéra Museum of which the curator is her friend Marianne Clouzot’s father. She leaves the lycée Victor Duruy to go the Central Union of Arts Décoratifs School, with her friend Marianne Clouzot and Dora Maar (where she is nicknamed « July 14th »), then at the Beaux Arts national art school where she works in André Lhote’s studio. She is an idealist, open to the new ideas of the time, and gets involved with leftist circles and communist students.