Jean Martin (1911-1996), The Man With The Scarf, Graphite On Paper

Jean MARTIN (1911-1996)
Man with a Scarf
Graphite on paper
Monogram “JM” lower right
16.5 × 14 cm (drawing)

Self-taught painter born in Lyon in 1911, Jean Martin developed a painting of reality that was on the fringes of the debates surrounding the quarrel of realism. He exhibited for the first time at the Salon d'Automne in 1933, at the Salon du Sud-Est (Lyon) the following year and at the Salon des Indépendants from 1935.

Jean Martin's pictorial style is marked by the ascendancy of the German masters of the 16th century in the wake of Matthias Grünewald, Lucas Cranach and Albrecht Dürer, whose work he observed at length thanks to the reproductions of works that he religiously preserved. He is also strongly influenced by contemporary Flemish expressionism. The Laethem-Saint-Martin School, discovered in 1927 on the occasion of the Belgian Art exhibition organized at the Musée des beaux-arts in Grenoble, produced a real visual shock for the artist and particularly influenced his painting of the 1930s.

In 1933, Jean Martin became friends with the gallery owner Marcel Michaud, who would be a great support to him. The two men shared the ambition of a social art nourished by the conquests of the Popular Front. The following year, his meeting with Henri Héraut, art critic and founder of the Forces Nouvelles group, also proved decisive. In 1938, Jean Martin exhibited at the Billiet-Vorms gallery in Paris on the occasion of the final demonstration of the said group alongside Georges Rohner, Jean Lasne, Henri Jannot and Robert Humblot. There he presented his masterpiece, Les Aveugles (1937), today preserved at the Musée des beaux-arts in Lyon. These artists particularly disapproved of the systematic deformation of nature.

In 1940, the artist's interest in books and the world of publishing led him to collaborate with Marc Barbezat on the creation of the avant-garde magazine L'Arbalète, for which he designed the first cover. After the war, Jean Martin left Lyon for Paris, where he contributed to the revival of the performing arts. He rubbed shoulders with major figures in French theatre, for whom he created numerous sets and theatre costumes, sometimes in collaboration with Jean Bertholle, Christian Bérard and Pablo Picasso. In the early 1950s, he founded the Art et tradition chrétienne gallery, taking an active part in the revival of sacred art. 

© A. BIOT-WORMS