Jean Jansem's Biography

Jean Jansem (1920-2013) is of Armenian origin, he grew up in Greece and then in France where he arrived at the age of 10.

Passionate about painting at a very young age, he began to devote himself to it as a teenager with some success.

He graduated from the School of Decorative Arts in Paris in 1938. At that time, he frequented and worked in particular with Y. Brayer, EG. Mac Avoy, E. Goerg.

From the post-war period, a force, a life, a joy burst out in his portraits, his flowers, his still lifes. The material, very worked, is never heavy, it is always punctuated by the omnipresent line but it is airy, transparent, luminous.
Fascinated by Venice, he paints strong works of intense clarity and dazzling colors.

Touched by the beauty of dance, he creates paintings and drawings of extreme grace.

His travels in Spain made him compose paintings of great strength, on bullfighting in particular.

The circus also inspires him and will lead him to create very spectacular “masquerades”. The processions naturally follow.

All this brings out, once again, his Mediterranean culture reinforced by his frequent stays in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal.

For Jansem, everything starts with drawing and comes back to it. His talent associated with the mastery of various techniques, from oil to graphite, from Indian ink and wash to watercolor, to engraving, justifies his success in France and abroad, in especially in the United States and Japan. This last country, which he visited for a long time in 1974, particularly excited him. Two museums are dedicated to him, in Ginza and Azumino.
He is, moreover, an icon of art in Armenia where his exhibition “Massacres” at the Genocide Museum in Yerevan, particularly marked the spirits.