Jean Leppien

Work in the collection: Jean Leppien, Geometric Abstraction, 1948, oil on canvas, 43.5 x 100 cm.

Jean Leppien, first called Kurt Leppien, studied at the Bauhaus University in Dessau as a student of Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. He emigrated to Paris in 1933 and interrupted his artistic work during the war years. Unfortunately, his works created up to 1945 were lost or destroyed. It was only after the Second World War that he was able to begin his actual artistic career, which was shaped throughout his life by his first time in Dessau. Influences from the Ècole Paris can also be found in his work, a direction that many post-war artists belonged to. His focus was on geometric-abstract painting.

born 1911 in Lüneburg
from 1929 studies at the Bauhaus Dessau with Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee
In 1931 he studied photography at the Itten School in Berlin
1933 emigration to France
Internment at the outbreak of war in 1939 , soldier in the Foreign Legion
1940 Illegal living in southern France in Algeria and Morocco
1944 arrested by the Gestapo together with his Jewish wife Suzanne
1945 imprisonment in Kaisheim, was freed by US troops
1946 Beginning of the actual artistic development
from 1948 life and work in Paris and on the Cote d´Azur
1953 Adoption of French citizenship
1987 publication of his autobiography
died in 1991 in Courbevoie near Paris