JEAN METZINGER 1883-1956

Settled in Nantes during his childhood, Jean Metzinger moved to Paris in 1903 to pursue painting as a profession. In Paris, he befriended many painters attached to various Post Impressionist movements. His first artworks were rendered in a Pointillist style. His meeting with Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso was decisive in his evolution and lead him to produce paintings in a Cubist manner. His artworks were exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1910 and 1911 or at the Salon d'Automne. Although Cubists, his artworks showed a personal approach of geometry. In "Du Cubisme" (1912) written with Albert Gleizes, Jean Metzinger theorized his new approach. Artists attached to this innovative Cubist expression - in rupture with that of Braque and Picasso - came together as a group known as "Section d'Or". It was founded in 1911 at the initiative of Metzinger. As given by its name, this group was centered on the significance of mathematical proportions. They centered their work on the perfect proportion known as the "section d'or" and created by Italian painters. Jean Metzinger produced up to the end of his life in the Cubist aesthetic. His artworks were exhibited in galleries such as Galerie La Boétie in Paris, Der Sturm Gallery in Berlin, Montross Gallery in New York or London's Leicester Galleries up to his last breath.