Jean JansemLarge Drawing of Boy by French Armenian Modernist Jean Jansem Ecole De Paris Art, c.1960

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Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) 1920-2013
Young Boy (sad young man)
Hand signed lower left corner
Provenance: Marble Arch Gallery NYC
… Read more Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) 1920-2013
Young Boy (sad young man)
Hand signed lower left corner
Provenance: Marble Arch Gallery NYC
Measurements Image size: 25 by 18 inches, overall 32.5 by 25 inches

Jean Jansem (Hovhannes Semerdjian) 1920-2013
Bursa, Ottoman Turkish Empire
Hovhannes "Jean" Semerdjian (Armenian: Հովհաննես "Ժանսեմ" Միրիջանի Սեմերջյան, 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, then in the Ottoman Empire. 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 the academies of Montparnasse (1934–1936). He studied in the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs. His teachers were Maurice Brianchon, Raymond Legueult and Roland Oudot. Jansem also studied at the Sabatie studio for a year. Early paintings by Jansem were mainly on national issues. Known for his washy representational paintings of figure, landscape, marine and genre scenes of European subjects: fishermen and children of Greece, bullfighting in Spain, Italian landscapes and markets, scenes of Venice and French France village marketplaces and landscapes, nude women, still lifes, and figures, Jansem painted with a variety of media that included gouache, watercolor, ink, and oil painting in a stylized and textural aesthetic. had individual exhibitions in Paris, New York, Chicago, London, Tokyo, Rome, Brussels, Lausanne, Beirut etc. His work was shown by the prominent Wally Findlay Galleries in New York, Paris, Palm Beach and Beverly Hills (they show many important artists including Gaston Sebire, Henri Maik, Gen Paul, Jean Pierre Cassigneul, Jean Dufy, Gustavo Novoa, Nicola Simbari, Dietz Edzard, Suzanne Eisendieck, Constantin Kluge, Louis Valtat, Michael Vollbracht and and Paul Aizpiri. 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.
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 of the period of Bernard Buffet and Alberto Giacometti.
This was sold by Marble Arch Gallery in New York City. they sold an eclectic group that included Jean Dufy, Leon Golub, Roberto Matta, Karel Appel and Akira Tanaka.


Awards
Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1953),
Prix Comparaison (1958, Mexico),
prize of the Biennale (1962, Bruges),
Panamanian prize «Vahagn» (2002),
Mesrop Mashtots Medal (2002),
Legion d'honneur (2003),
Medal of Honor (2010, Armenia). See less