Jean Bazaine

Jean René Bazaine (21 December 1904 in Paris – 4 March 2001 in Clamart) was a French painter, designer of stained glass windows, and writer. He was the great great grandson of the English Court portraitist Sir George Hayter.

Bazaine studied sculpture at the Académie Julian and with Paul Landowski after a brief passage at the École des Beaux-Arts. At the same time he continued his study of philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne in Paris attaining certificats in art history and philosophy (1921–1925). Bergson's L'évolution créatrice was his main inspiration at the time. With Baltrušaitis he participated at the first "Groupe d'Histoire de l'art" led by Emile Mâle and Henri Focillon.

These studies would culminate in an influential text Notes sur la peinture d'aujourd'hui (1948), aimed at going beyond the boundaries -quite dogmatic at the time- of abstract and figurative. It supplied the theoretical base for his creative criticism that found its practical use when he was invited, in 1952, by the Carnegie Foundation to sit as the European member of the jury for the Pittsburgh International Exhibition of Contemporary Painting in company with the American painter William Baziotes.

Bazaine did not pursue his initiation into sculpture, though he became one of the great friends of Alexander Calder, Henri Laurens and of Giacometti, his neighbour at his atelier in the Paris Zone -Porte de Vanves.

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