Jean-Jacques Fernier (25 May 1931 – 25 March 2020) was a French architect and historian.

Biography

Fernier was a registered architect. He graduated from the

École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine The Seine ( , ) is a river in nor ...

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

in 1961. From 1959 to 1961, he worked for Edouard Albert. In 1961, he joined forces with André Biro to create the firm Biro & Fernier. In 1965, he participated in the Groupe international d'architecture prospective (GIAP) along with

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, Paul Maymont, Georges Patrix, and

Nicolas Schöffer Nicolas Schöffer (; 6 September 1912 — 8 January 1992) was a Hungarian-born French cybernetic artist. Schöffer was born in Kalocsa, Hungary and lived in France from 1936 until his death in Montmartre, Paris in 1992. He built his artwor ...

. Biro and Fernier worked in the movement "Construction and Humanism". He received the Grand Prix de l'urbanisme for his project Ville en X. He conducted most of his work with his partner, André Biro in the Biro & Fernier firm. Fernier built numerous public and private works in Paris,

Papeete Papeete (Tahitian language, Tahitian: ''Papeʻetē'', pronounced ; old name: ''Vaiʻetē''Personal communication with Michael Koch in ) is the capital city of French Polynesia, an overseas collectivity of the France, French Republic in the Pacific ...

, and elsewhere in

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

. When Biro left in 1985, Fernier created Fernier & Associates, which he passed on to his daughter, Laurence. Jean-Jacques was the son of painter Robert Fernier, who wrote a

catalogue raisonné A (or critical catalogue) is an annotated listing of the works of an artist or group of artists and can contain all works or a selection of works categorised by different parameters such as medium or period. A ''catalogue raisonné'' is normal ...

on the works of

Gustave Courbet Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet ( ; ; ; 10 June 1819 – 31 December 1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the ...

and founder of the Musée Courbet. In 2001, Fernier worked with the "Association des amis de Gustave Courbet" and the "Institut Gustave Courbet - Association des amis de Gustave Courbet et du musée". The Institut is now chaired by

Hervé Novelli Hervé Novelli (born 6 March 1949) is a French politician of Italian origin, and a past member of the UDF group. He was a deputé in the Assemblée Nationale for the Indre-et-Loire département from 2002 to 2007, having previously been a dépu ...

. On 7 February 2013, the Fernier obtained an expanded version of '' L'Origine du monde'' by Courbet, which was larger than the originally published version. An anonymous Parisian collector purchased the work in 2010. However, the curators of the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) () is a museum in Paris, France, on the Rive Gauche, Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts architecture, Beaux-Arts railway station built from 1898 to 1900. The museum holds mai ...

rejected the work, calling it "fanciful". Therefore, Fernier was the only expert to own both the known painting and the original work. There was a newfound controversy over the rightful owner of the original painting. Jean-Jacques Fernier died on 25 March 2020 at the age of 88.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fernier, Jean-Jacques 1931 births 2020 deaths French architects