Arts
down
Artists
down
Galleries
down

METZINGER  Jean

  Masterpieces
  
1
Biographie

METZINGER Jean



Jean METZINGER (1883 - 1956)

Born in Nantes, Jean Metzinger found himself in Paris at the age of 20. After trying his hand at Pointillism, he exposed at the age of 26 with the Fauves.

While delving into chromatic research, Metzinger became interested in Cubism. This is also thanks to his encounter with poet Guillaume Appollinaire who later introduced him to Braque and Picasso. Picasso would have the greatest influence on the young artist.

In 1911, Metzinger took part, with Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes and Fernand Léger in the first Cubism exhibition. He would participate in every one of their exhibitions, including the Section d’Or, the French branch of the Cubist movement.

With time, Metzinger became one of Cubism’s most respected thinkers. In 1912, he published, with Gleizes, a work entitled “Of Cubism”, one of the first works on the subject.

Metzinger devoted himself to painting still life and individuals in elaborate detail, a style that one could assimilate to Italian Futurism.

At the end of the 1990s, New York was the stage of the artist’s market triumph.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jean Metzinger was born in Nantes, France, on June 24, 1883. At the age of twenty he moved to Paris to pursue a career as a painter. One of his early friends in Paris was Robert Delaunay. About 1908 he met the writer Max Jacob, who introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire and his circle, which included Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Picasso was to have a significant influence on Metzinger from this time to about 1923. In 1910 Metzinger exhibited for the first time at the Salon des Indépendants. In 1910 and 1911 he published several articles on contemporary painting and afterward periodically contributed to the literature on Modern art. Metzinger was the first to note in print that Picasso and Braque had dismissed traditional perspective and merged multiple views of an object in a single image; his article on this subject appeared in Pan in 1910.

In 1911, with Robert Delaunay, Albert Gleizes, and Fernand Léger, Metzinger participated in the controversial Salle 41 at the Salon des Indépendants, the first formal group exhibition of Cubist painters. His work was represented at the Salon d’Automne in Paris that same year. Metzinger collaborated with Gleizes in 1912 on Du cubisme, in which a theoretical foundation for Cubism [more] was proposed. During that year he was a founder of the Section d’Or and exhibited at the Galerie de la Boétie in Paris with other members of the group, including Alexander Archipenko, Roger de La Fresnaye, Gleizes, Juan Gris, Léger, and Louis Marcoussis. In 1913 Metzinger’s work was again shown at the Salon d’Automne, and he continued to exhibit in the principal salons of Paris thereafter. This same year he took part in an exhibition at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin and shared a show at the Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris with Gleizes and Léger. In 1916 Metzinger showed with Jean Crotti, Marcel Duchamp, and Gleizes at the Montross Gallery in New York. After army service during World War I Metzinger returned in 1919 to Paris, where he lived for the remainder of his life. Among his solo exhibitions were those at the Leicester Galleries in London in 1930, the Hanover Gallery in London in 1932, and the Arts Club of Chicago in 1953. The artist died in Paris on November 3, 1956.


HOME
Développement & Hébergement Mediactive