JEAN LÉON JANSEM (French, 1920-2013). Souvenir d'Italie, circa 1960. Oil on canvas. 9-1/2 x 13-3/4 inches (24.1 x 34.9 c...

Description

JEAN LÉON JANSEM (French, 1920-2013)
Souvenir d'Italie, circa 1960
Oil on canvas
9-1/2 x 13-3/4 inches (24.1 x 34.9 cm)
Signed lower right: Jansem

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE TEXAS ESTATE

PROVENANCE:
Findlay Galleries, Inc., New York (label verso);
Collection of Mr. and Mrs. John R. McFarlin.

NOTE:
When this work was acquired from the Findlay Galleries, it was sold in the frame it still retains which bears a Findlay tag upon which is written the title Nature Mort[e] au Pot Blanc (Still Life with White Pot), and a gallery inventory number (8878). Because the painting is clearly not a still life, bears a different inventory number (8893) on its stretcher bar, and relates closely to work Jansem produced in Italy in 1960, it seems almost certain that the frame and the tag originally belonged to a still life of the same size. Evidently the gallery removed the frame from the still life and used it to frame this work prior to its sale circa 1965.

Internationally recognized French Armenian painter-printmaker Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) died this past summer on August 27 in a suburb just outside Paris at the age of 93. Although born in 1920 in Bursa, Turkey, Jansem and his family fled to Greece in 1922. He spent his childhood in Thessaloniki, and arrived in France in 1931 when he was 11. From that point on, he pursued a career in art, and called France his home for the remainder of his life although he traveled widely in search of subject matter for his art. Jansem's first professional schools were the free academies of Montparnasse and the Marais (1934-36), which were followed by studies at the École des Arts Decoratifs (1936-38), where he trained with Beianchon, Leguelt and Oudet and learned fabric and furniture design which enabled him to make a living through the war years. He met fellow Armenian teacher, Ariel, who taught him to draw, but it was in the works of Picasso that he found his greatest revelation. In 1950 he went to Greece, and it was in the Mediterranean that his work underwent a transformation from somber, rather politically charged subjects to light-filled ones. The present work with its bold use of shape and splashes of intense color exemplifies this stylistic shift. Beginning in the 1950s, Jansem exhibited widely in international venues, and began winning prestigious awards for his painting. The Findlay Galleries hosted a succession of one-man shows of his work beginning in 1965, around the time the present landscape was acquired by the family of the present owners. His paintings are represented in permanent museum collections in France, Armenia, Russia, Japan, and the United States.


More information about Jansem, Jean. See also: Jean Jansem, Hovhannes "Jean" Semerdjian Artist.



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