Jean Dunand (1877–1942) was a Swiss and French painter, sculptor, metal craftsman and interior designer during the

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

period. He was particularly known for his lacquered screens and other art objects.

Biography

Jules-John Dunand was born on 20 May 1877 in Lancy, Switzerland. He later adopted the French first name of Jean, and became a naturalized French citizen in 1922. At the age of fourteen, he began studying sculpture at the Geneva School of Industrial Arts, where he won several prizes and received his diploma. In 1897 he moved to Paris and began to work as a sculptor and a copper craftsman. He participated in the 1904 Salon of the National Society of Fine Arts, and in 1905 he was selected a member, after completing an interior for the Countess de Bearn. He worked with a very wide range of materials, including steel, copper, pewter and silver, which he worked with hammer and glided, and encrusted with gold or

mother-of-pearl Nacre ( , ), also known as mother-of-pearl, is an organicinorganic composite material produced by some molluscs as an inner shell layer. It is also the material of which pearls are composed. It is strong, resilient, and iridescent. Nacre is ...

, and then often decorated with enamels and patinas. His works included vases, plates, boxes, and jewelry. In about 1912, he began working with Seizo Sugawara, a Japanese

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be c ...

painter who had emigrated to France, and began to use that ancient and almost forgotten technique in his own work, making large decorative panels and screens. He also sometimes decorated pieces of furniture by other designers, including Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann and

Pierre Legrain Pierre Legrain (18 February 1920 – 20 June 2005) was a French athlete. He competed in the men's hammer throw at the 1948 Summer Olympics and the 1952 Summer Olympics The 1952 Summer Olympics (, ), officially known as the Games of the ...

. His themes were greatly varied, from floral and animal designs, to a kind of neo-cubism, to oriental designs. For the 1925 Paris Exposition of Decorative Arts, he worked on one of his best-known exhibits, a proposal for the interior of an Art Deco French Embassy, creating a smoking room entirely decorated in lacquered panels. He also contributed to Ruhlmann's ''House of a Collector''. He contributed to the interiors of many apartments, and of ocean liners; he decorated the smoking room of the ocean liner . He died on 7 June 1942 in Paris. His works can be found in museums in Amsterdam, Denver, Detroit, Geneva, Lausanne, Le Havre, London, Miami, Minneapolis, New York, Paris, Pittsburg, Quimper, Reims, Richmond, San Francisco, Tokyo and Zurich.

Gallery

Jean dunand, piatto in nichel argentato con decoro a piume di pavone, francia 1914.JPG, Jean Dunand, ''Peacock tray'', nickel and silver in a peacock feather design, (1914),

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 ...

, Paris. File:Tray MET sf23.176.6.jpg, Jean Dunand, Tray of copper inlaid with silver, about 1920 (Metropolitan Museum of Art). File:"Fortissimo" MET DP282027.jpg, Jean Dunand, Detail of Decorative panel ''Fortissimo'' (1935) (

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an Encyclopedic museum, encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the List of largest museums, third-largest museum in the world and the List of larg ...

). File:'La Chasse (The Hunt)' by Jean Dunand, 1935, Wolfsonian-FIU Museum.jpg, Jean Dunand, ''The Hunt'', panel (1936), ( Wolfsonian-FIU Museum). File:Vase MET DP291251.jpg, Jean Dunand, Vase of lacquered metal, c. 1935 (Metropolitan Museum). File:Jean dunand, vaso ovoide, 1935 ca., rame laccato.jpg, Jean Dunand, Lacquered vase, c. 1935 (

Metropolitan Museum The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially referred to as the Met, is an encyclopedic art museum in New York City. By floor area, it is the third-largest museum in the world and the largest art museum in the Americas. With 5.36 million v ...

). File:Jean-théodore dupas e jean dunand, il carro di aurora, lacca e foglia metallica su gesso, 1935.jpg, Jean Dunand and Jean Dupas, Panel of ''Chariot of Aurora'', lacquer and metal, gesso (1935), (

Carnegie Museum of Art The Carnegie Museum of Art is an art museum in the Oakland (Pittsburgh), Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The museum was originally known as the Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute and was formerly located ...

). File:Easy Chair MET DP282017.jpg, Jean Dunand, Easy chair of lacquered wood and goatskin (1927-1928) (Metropolitan Museum).

References

Bibliography

* * Félix Marcilhac, Jean Dunand: His Life and Work, London, Thames and Hudson, 1991 * Exhibition Catalogue "Madeleine Vionnet, Puriste de la Mode", Les Arts décoratifs, Paris, 24-06-2009 - 31-01-2010. * E. Bénézit, "Dictionary of Artists", Paris 2006, Vol. 4, p. 1338-1339. French furniture designers French interior designers Art Deco designers 1877 births 1942 deaths 20th-century Swiss Jews Art Deco artists {{designer-stub