"His oils pursue clean, luminous structures in the manner of the post-Cubist tradition — built from sketches made on location across France and Europe, then distilled in his Paris studio into images that seek only to illuminate the idealized subject."
Jean Cluseau-Lanauve was born on November 7, 1914, in Périgueux, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, where his talent for drawing was recognized early and actively encouraged by his family. He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1933, studying painting under André Devambez and lithography, and completing his formation at the Académies de Montparnasse — also drawing deeply on the influence of André Lhote. He settled permanently in Paris at 21 rue du Vieux-Colombier in the 6th arrondissement, in a studio overlooking the courtyard of the Théâtre du Vieux-Colombier, while remaining throughout his life closely attached to his native Périgord.
His career began with immediate recognition. His first entry to the Salon des Artistes Français in 1935 — a landscape of the Périgord — was purchased by the City of Paris, and a silver medal followed that same year. A bronze medal at the 1937 Exposition Universelle in Paris came next, and in 1939 he was an invited guest at the New York World's Fair.
The war interrupted everything. Cluseau-Lanauve was taken prisoner in Germany, where he produced more than 2,000 drawings in captivity — later exhibited as Faces of the Stalag. After the Liberation, he returned to painting with renewed purpose. A state travel scholarship in 1947 brought him to Tunisia, and the following year he was awarded the Prix de Venise — shared with painters Baron-Renouard, Georges Dayez, and Camille Hilaire — which gave him six months to work in Venice, immersing himself in the city's atmosphere and in the lessons of the Italian masters. Travel would remain central to his practice: Norway, the Mediterranean aboard merchant navy vessels (1953–54), Yugoslavia (1959 and 1965), Réunion (1972–73), and Turkey (1982–84) all left their mark on his work.
His commitments extended well beyond the canvas. He taught graphic art at the École Estienne from 1951 to 1976. In 1949 he created fifteen illustrated programme covers for the Cannes Film Festival, each bearing an original watercolour. In 1964, at the request of the director of the Opéra de Nice, he designed both the costumes for Verdi's Falstaff and the sets for Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro — eighty of those designs were subsequently acquired by the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris. He was named official painter to the French Navy in 1989. In 1967 he co-founded the group Art & Prospective from within the Salon Comparaisons.
Cluseau-Lanauve was an inveterate plein-air worker. He built his compositions from sketches made on location — in his beloved Périgord, in Brittany, Provence, Holland, and across Europe — then developed them into paintings in his Paris studio. His oils, increasingly Cubist in spirit from the 1950s onward, pursue clean, luminous structures in the manner of the post-Cubist tradition associated with Jacques Villon. His subjects ranged widely: landscapes, nudes, figures, seascapes, festivals, and everyday life.
He exhibited throughout his career at the Salon des Tuileries, the Salon de la Société des Beaux-Arts, the Salon Comparaisons, and internationally in New York and Osaka (1970). In 1990, his body of work was honored at the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture à l'Eau, the Paris Salon d'Automne, and in a retrospective at the Château de Puyguilhem in Périgord. The Prix Puvis-de-Chavannes was awarded to him in 1993 for his collected work. His paintings, prints, and drawings are held in the collections of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne.
Jean Cluseau-Lanauve died on February 7, 1997, in Antonne-et-Trigonant, near his beloved Périgueux.