Jean Metzinger
French, 1883-1956
Person TypeIndividual
French, born in Lithuania and active in U.S.A., 1891 - 1973
BiographyThe French painter Jean Metzinger was born into a military family in Nantes, France. He developed skills in mathematics, music, and painting, which he studied at the Art Academy in Nantes before moving to Paris. There he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in 1903 and painted with large mosaic-like brushstrokes to achieve luminous effects from unmixed pigments. By 1912, when Metzinger co-wrote an influential essay on contemporary French painting with painter Albert Gleizes (1881–1953), he had already become associated with a particular pictorial attitude shared by several painters around him that was becoming known as Cubism, a movement characterized by breaking the picture plane into geometric shapes. During World War I, Metzinger worked to develop his own metaphysical perspective to express the enduring relations between self and the world through painting. Metzinger continued to paint in various styles in Paris until his death.