Jean Jansem

Hovhannes "Jean" Semerdjian (9 March 1920 – 27 August 2013), also known as Jean Jansem, was a French-Armenian painter. Jansem's artworks are internationally known, and are part of museum collections throughout France, Japan and the United States. A Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia (2002).
He was awarded by the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1953 and by the Knight of the French Legion of Honour in 2003.The President of Armenia awarded Jansem a Medal of Honor for his “reinforcement of Armenian-French cultural ties.”
Hovhannes Semerdjian was born in 1920 in Bursa, Turkey. In 1922, his family fled to Greece. He spent his childhood in Thessaloniki.They arrived to Issy-les-Moulineaux suburb of Paris, France in 1931 when he was 11 and that is when he begin to paint. The first professional schools for Jansem became free academies of Montparnasse (1934-1936). He studied in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. His teachers were Brianshon, Legjon and Udon. Jansem also studied at the Sabatie studio for a year. Early paintings by Jansem were mainly to national issues. He had individual exhibitions in Paris, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Rome, Brussels, Lausanne, Beirut etc. Hovhannes Semerdjian was elected the President of the Young Artists' Saloon in 1956.

He won the Comparison prize in Mexico in 1958. In Japan, two museums were built to honor Jansem′s work, located in Tokyo Ginza and Nagano Prefecture Azumino. In 1973 he visited Armenia for the first time. In 2001, 34 of his paintings were given to the Armenian Genocide Museum.
The act of painting reveals who we are. We are betrayed by what we love.
— Jean Jansem
Azumino Jansem Museum
Jansem’s primary sources of inspiration were Goya and Brueghel. His mother and his children were the main heroes in his earlier works. Jansem was characterized as a miserablist, an artist of unfortunate people.
On 10 March 2010, the day after Jansem's 90th birthday, during a visit to France, the President of Armenia awarded Jansem a medal of honour saying the following, "Our nation is proud of you and values highly your art. While living outside Armenia, you have made our country more recognizable, extending our nation's good name all over the world."Jansem died on 27 August 2013, aged 93, outside Paris.Wikipedia

Pop Art Charles Lapicque

"The French marine painter Charles Lapicque was born on October 6, 1898 in Theizé (Département Rhône). He spent his childhood in Epinal and visited Brittany (near Paimpol) for the first time in 1900, returning every summer for many years. He learned to play piano and violin. Beginning in 1909, Lapicque lived in Paris.
During the First World War, he fought in the artillery and received the "Croix de Guerre" in 1918. In the following year, he entered the École centrale des arts et manufactures academy in Paris and completed his training as an engineer here. However, he felt strongly drawn to art and dedicated himself to it on the weekends in particular. The artist painted his first landscape in the vicinity of Caen in 1920. Charles Lapicque continued to study as an autodidact in 1928. He turned to painting, printing techniques, and sculpture.

The artist’s first individual exhibition already took place in 1929 at the Gallery Jeanne Bucher. In addition to his main job as an engineer, the artist also visited museums and antique dealers and dedicated himself to illumination, tapestry, and enamel work. In 1935, Lapicque first met Gabriel Marcel (1889 – 1973) and, as a result, Jean Wahl (1888 – 1974). The acquaintance with the two philosophers formed the beginning of the philosophical and esthetic observations by the artist.
In 1937, he received the commission to create five large wall designs for the Palais de la Découvert in Paris. One of these ("La synthèse organique") won him the medal of honor from the 1937 Paris World Exhibition. In 1941, Lapicque participated in the group exhibition "Vingt jeunes peintres de tradition francais" by Jean Bazaine (1904 – 2001). This was the first event of painting from the modern age under the German occupation. Two years later, the artist visited Brittany again.
Charles Lapicque was only able to give up his job as an engineer through a contract with the Gallery Louis Carré in 1943. From that time on, he dedicated himself completely to art and created many works with the liberation of Paris as their theme. He also travelled to Brittany in 1945. The artist received the "Prix Raoul Dufy" of the Biennial of Venice in 1953. In the following years, Lapicque travelled to Venice four times and painted the villas, their gardens and inside furnishings, as well as the gables and facades of the churches.

In addition, he also went on trips to Rome (1957), Greece (1963), Spain (1973), Holland (1974), Vézelay (1975), the castles of the Loire (1976), and Aix-en-Provence (1979). In the treatise "Essais sur l’espace, l’art et la destinée", which was published in 1958, Lapicque formulated the theory of his artistic works. Between 1969 and 1972, he produced sculptures of metal and plastic, as well as tapestries and many engravings and lithographs. In 1979, the artist was awarded the "Grand prix national de peinture". Charles Lapicque died on July 15, 1988 in Orsay (near Paris)."(www.charles-lapicque.com )

Gordon Onslow Ford

Gordon Onslow Ford (26 December 1912 – 9 November 2003) was one of the last surviving members of the 1930s Paris surrealist group surrounding André Breton.
Born in England in 1912 to a family of artists, Gordon Onslow Ford began painting at an early age. His grandfather, Edward Onslow Ford, was a renowned Victorian sculptor. At the age of 11, he began painting landscapes under the guidance of his uncle. Following the death of his father at age 14, he was sent to the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth. The ocean affected him deeply and his early works depicted ocean scenes. The metaphor of taking a "voyage" later became an important aspect of his paintings.Wikipedia