Jean Crotti (24 April 1878 – 30 January 1958) was a French painter. Crotti was born in Bulle,

Fribourg, Switzerland , neighboring_municipalities= Düdingen, Givisiez, Granges-Paccot, Marly, Pierrafortscha, Sankt Ursen, Tafers, Villars-sur-Glâne , twintowns = Rueil-Malmaison (France) , website = www.ville-fribourg.ch , Location of , Location of () () ...

. He first studied in Munich, Germany at the School of Decorative Arts, then at age 23 moved to Paris to study art at the ''

Académie Julian The Académie Julian () was a private art school for painting and sculpture founded in Paris, France, in 1867 by French painter and teacher Rodolphe Julian (1839–1907) that was active from 1868 through 1968. It remained famous for the number a ...

''. Initially he was influenced by Impressionism, then by

Fauvism Fauvism /ˈfoʊvɪzm̩/ is the style of ''les Fauves'' (French language, French for "the wild beasts"), a group of early 20th-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the Representation (arts), repr ...

and

Art Nouveau Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...

. Around 1910 he began to experiment with Orphism, an offshoot of

Cubism Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...

, and a style that would be enhanced by his association in New York City with Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia. A refugee from World War I, he looked to America as a place where he could live and develop his art. In New York, he shared a studio with Marcel Duchamp and met his sister,

Suzanne Duchamp Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti (20 October 1889 – 11 September 1963) was a French Dadaist painter, collagist, sculptor, and draughtsman. Her work was significant to the development of Paris Dada and modernism and her drawings and collages explore f ...

. She was part of the Dada movement in which Crotti would become involved. In 1916, he exhibited Orphist-like paintings, several of which had religious titles that also included his ''Portrait of Marcel Duchamp'' and his much discussed ''Les Forces MÈcaniques de l'amour Mouvement'', created by using found objects. In the fall of 1916, Crotti separated from his wife, Yvonne Chastel, and returned to Paris. He had begun a relationship with Suzanne Duchamp that would culminate in his divorce in 1919 and immediate marriage to Suzanne. An artist in her own right, she would greatly influence Jean Crotti's painting. In 1920, he produced one of his best known works, a portrait of Thomas Edison. He would be part of the 1925 ''Exposition International'' in Paris, and the International Exhibition of Modern Art at the

Brooklyn Museum The Brooklyn Museum is an art museum located in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. At , the museum is New York City's second largest and contains an art collection with around 1.5 million objects. Located near the Prospect Heights, Crown H ...

in 1926 - 1927. Over the ensuing years, he would create numerous paintings and be the subject for several solo exhibitions at major galleries in England, France, Germany, and the United States. Crotti died in Paris. Jean Crotti's heirs donated his personal papers to the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, where they can be consulted by researchers. In Spring 2011, Francis M. Naumann Fine Art showed an exhibition, ''Inhabiting Abstraction'', including important examples from every significant phase and development in the realm of abstraction that Crotti explored, as well as one-of-a-kind works such as "Parterre de reve" (1920), in which he framed his painting palette and then signed it.

References

External links

Website of Jean Crotti (by Jean Carlo Bertoli)

Jean Crotti papers, 1913-1973, bulk 1913-1961
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
Jean Crotti, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crotti, Jean 1878 births 1958 deaths Académie Julian alumni 19th-century French painters French male painters 20th-century French painters 20th-century French male artists Swiss emigrants to France 19th-century Swiss painters Swiss male painters 20th-century Swiss painters Dada French people of Italian descent Art Nouveau painters People from Bulle Swiss people of Italian descent Swiss dadaist 19th-century French male artists 19th-century Swiss male artists 20th-century Swiss male artists