Jean Dupas

Jean Théodore Dupas (21 February 1882 – 1964) was a French painter, artist, designer, poster artist, and decorator whose work is considered the utmost example of Art Nouveau and Art Deco visual arts.

Life

Dupas was born in Bordeaux. He won the prix de Rome in 1910. His personal style ranges from academic and/or neoclassicism. Dupas has worked in various exponents of the Nouveau and Deco areas, such as the fashion magazine Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. In 1925 at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, he showed Les Perruches, one of his most famous oil on canvas. In 1927, with the aide of the famous French printing house Draeger, he conceived one of the masterpieces of printed advertising, a catalogue for the fur company Max.

In the 1930s, Dupas was commissioned by Frank Pick to produce the artwork for a series of posters for the underground network of London Transport.

Dupas expressed his predilection for large-scale projects: "The greater is my work, the happy I am." Thus his collaboration in the decor of famous steamships during the 1930s, emphasizing the Art Deco mode of the time. Among these works, the SS Île-de-France and the SS Liberté were among the first. But in 1935, with the help of glass master Champigneulle, he decorated the grand salon of the Normandie, in more than 400 square meters of painted and frosted glass.

He became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1941.

Works

Decor by Jean Dupas La Vigne et le Vin (1925), Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine

• Frescos of the Saint-Esprit church, Paris
• Frescos of the d'Albert dans la Somme church
• Palais royal de Bucarest
• Collège Saint Louis, Paris
• Frescos of the Claude Monet school, Paris
• Great frescos of the La vigne et le vin, in the Aquitaine museum, Bordeaux
• Two frescos in the viewing room at the Bordeaux Stock Market Exchange
• La femme en rouge (1927), Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris
• La fontaine italienne (1926), Musée de Beauvais
• Le char de l'aurore. This last panel constitute of Normandie which was exposed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the 2005 exhibition, Art Deco Paris. Today is housed at the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh.
• Musée Antoine-Lécuyer, Saint Quentin
• Musée des arts décoratifs, Bordeaux

Sources

• Jacqueline du Pasquier, Bordeaux Art Déco, Éditions Somogy, 1997
• Affiches de Jean Dupas. Catalogue de l'exposition, Bordeaux, 1987
• Les Pages d'or de l'édition française, Mairie de Paris, 1988
• Patricia Bayer, Art déco. Le livre, Éditions Florilège, 1988
• Louis René Vian, Les Arts décoratifs à bord des paquebots français, Éditions Fonmare, 1992

Links

• (English) Jean Dupas sur Artcyclopedia