JEAN CLUSEAU LANAUVE

French, 1914-1997

60 years of workshops in the 6th district                 

Born November 7, 1914 in Perigueux; died Febrary 7, 1997, in Paris.

Painter, watercolourist, pastellist, illustrator.  Figure compositions, figures, landscapes and seascapes.

Cluseau-Lanauve studied from 1933 to 1937 under Andre Devambrez at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and also attended courses at the Academie de Montparnasse and with Andre Lhote, whose work he much admired.  In 1938, he showed a vast composition entitled September 1938.

He was imprisoned during World War II and subsequently painted Faces of the Stalag.  After the war, in 1947, he received a state scholarship that enabled him to travel to Tunisia.  He was awarded the Prix de Venice in 1948, which permitted him to discover Venice and its Academia.  He also traveled in Norway, on the Mediterranean with the merchant navy (1953-1954), in the former Yugoslavia (1959,1965), in Reunion (1972-1973) and in Turkey (1982-1984).

He served as an official painter to the French Navy from 1989 and also taught art at the Ecole Estienne from 1951-1976.  He produced state sets for The Marriage of Figaro and for Falstaff at the Nice Opera House in 1965 and, not least, worked as a book illustrator.

He painted outdoors, seeking inspiration in his native Perigord and from time spent working in Holland, Brittany and Provence.  His landscapes with figures portray everyday scenes, festivals and carnivals with subtle rigor reminiscent of the post-Cubist tradition as exemplified by Jacques Villon.

He exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries and regularly at the Salon de la Societe des Beaux-Arts, and was also an exhibitor from the first Salon Comparaisons.  He exhibited at and, since 1976, was president of the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture it l’Eau.  He showed his work at group exhibitions both nationally and internationally, winning notably a silver medal at the Salon des Artistes Francais in 1935 and a bronze at the 1937 Exposition Universelle in Paris.  He exhibited in New York (1939) and Osaka (1970).  His pastels, watercolours and oils were featured in a very large number of solo exhibitions.  In 1990, his body of work was acknowledged at the Salon du Dessin et de la Peinture a l’Eau and the Paris Salon d’Automne, and at a retrospective at the Chateau de Puyguilhem-en-perigord.  He was awarded the Prix Puvisde-Chavannes in 1993 for his collection.