Jean Varda
| Jean Varda | |
|---|---|
| Born | 11 September 1893 İzmir |
| Died | 10 January 1971 Mexico City |
| Known for | Collage Art |
| Spouse(s) | Dorothy Varda, Virginia Barclay Varda, Chryssa Vardea Mavromichali |
Jean (Yanko) Varda (11 September 1893, in Smyrna (now İzmir) - 10 January 1971) was an artist best known for his collage work.
He was of mixed Greek and French descent. As a child he was known as a prodigy, and received commissions to paint portraits of prominent Athenians.
At 19, Varda moved to Paris where he met Picasso and Braque and lost all interest in the academic style of painting he had been pursuing until that time. He moved to London during World War I, became a ballet dancer, and began to make friendships with members of the avant garde in London.
By 1922 Varda was back in Paris and had returned to painting. Beginning in 1923 Varda spent most of his summers in Cassis, in the south of France, sharing Roland Penrose's home Villa Les Mimosas, where they welcomed a number of well-known people to his homes including, in addition to Braque and Miró, Derain, Max Ernst, Roger Fry, Clive Bell, Duncan Grant, Gerald Brenan, Wolfgang Paalen and others. By the mid-1920s he was spending most of his winters in London.
During the 1930s Varda developed a type of mosaic that involved the use of pieces of broken mirrors. He would scratch the backs of the pieces of mirror, then paint bright colors in the scratches so the paint showed through to the front of the mirror. He would then glue the pieces of mirror to a board, which he had prepared with a gritty gesso mixture.
Varda exhibited his work in London and Paris before leaving for New York in 1939, where his work was exhibited at the Neumann-Willard Gallery. In 1940 he moved to Anderson Creek, in Big Sur, California, and after that to Monterey, about 40 miles north of Big Sur. In late 1943 he persuaded the writer Henry Miller to move to Big Sur. In 1944 Miller wrote an admiring profile of Varda called Varda the Master Builder, which was published by Circle Magazine, an avant garde art and literary magazine produced in Berkeley by George Leite. During the war years Varda’s house in Monterey became a virtual salon for artists, writers and other creative people. Through Henry Miller Varda met the writer Anaïs Nin. Varda and Nin became close friends and Nin would write about Varda frequently. In addition, her novel "Collages" includes a slightly fictionalized profile of Varda.
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