Elvira Jean - 1904-1996

[LCR]

Today I have prepared a gift for our Samvelchikov - story about a French artist of Armenian origin, Elvira Jean. It dealt with abstract painting, stylistically it belongs to the second school of Paris. This her last name - Kuyumdzhan.

Elvira Jean was born in Bulgaria in the industrialist family of Armenian origin. After studying in Switzerland, she returned to Sofia. At this time the Bulgarian government offered the Armenians living in Bulgaria, to elect himself to some other nationality (an incredible story, I did not know about it!), And the family Kuyumdzhan decided to take the citizenship of Persia. In the early 1920's. Elvira Jean traveled in Europe - in Vienna, she met psychoanalysts Jung and Adler, then in London, she studied languages - English, German and Italian. In 1926, after a trip to the United States, she settled in Paris, where she enrolled in the Academy Julian. Since 1931, she participated in group exhibitions. Her friends were artists such as Jean Bertola, Lucien Lautrec, Jean Le Moal, Gustave Sinzhe.
After the war, Elvira Jean, along with his supporters engaged in Non-figurative painting. From 1954 to 1957, her work is regularly exhibited in the gallery Rock. In 1957 she settled in the south of France, in MOISSAC-Bellevue. It was there that she realized her first stained glass windows for churches in EYZIES sur-Yerevan (1957, in conjunction with Raul Ubac) and Villas Reunion in Paris (1960, together with the Bertola, Le Moalem, Menes and Seiler).