Jean Charlot
Louis Henri Jean Charlot ( born February 8, 1898 in Paris, † March 20, 1979 in Honolulu) was an active in the United States and Latin America, painter and graphic artist of French origin.
Family roots
Jean Charlot arrived in Paris as the son of originating from St. Petersburg businessman Henri Pierre Jean Charlot (1860-1914) and the artist Anne Goupil (1870-1929), was born. He and his sister Odette grew Spanish and French speaking, but also read Russian literature and possessed by the business his father also German. His sister, to the Jean Charlot had a tense relationship, later studied with Marie Curie medicine and became a urologist.
His father was the illegitimate son of French Henriette Charlot from Cussy -les -Forges, who worked as a milliner in Russia. Jean Charlot had little contact with his paternal grandfather, in which his father grew up after his grandmother Henriette Charlot died in Moscow in 1871 at the age of 31 years due to the prevailing epidemic of smallpox. The name of his paternal grandfather was deleted in the family book.
His mother Anne Goupil came from a French -Aztecan family. His Jewish great-great grandfather Pierre Nicolas Goupil came from Normandy and held already in 1820 again in Mexico. Jean Charlot's great-grandfather Joseph Ferdinand Victor Sénateur Goupil was born in Rouen and also spent extended periods in Mexico. In 1830 he married in Mexico City, the Spanish- Aztec Anna Benita Meléndez. He earned the 1851 Pavillon de Sully of the New Palace of Saint- Germain -en- Laye, imported 1853 from Tacuba several agave plants and bred them. The later Léon Harmel and the third child of Alice: From the marriage with Anna eleven children were born, including the first son of the later collectors and a major contributor to Jean Charlot Charles Eugène Espidon, the second son of Jean Charlot's grandfather Louis Cyriaque ( Luis Ciriaco Spanish), the son of the church- social industrialist Léon Harmel married. His grandfather Louis Cyriaque was considered a free thinker. He married the Paris-born Mexican Sara Louisa Meléndez, the Jewish faith was what at that time was unusual for members of the Catholic bourgeoisie. Jean Charlot's mother emerged as the third daughter from the marriage.
Life and work
Charlot suffered in childhood with severe strabismus, which was corrected by an operation on the weaker right eye when he was seven years old. In addition, he was left-handed and was retrained according to the former practice. He sat down in childhood with the indigenous culture of Latin America apart. About his grandfather Louis Cyriaque he also had contact with the archaeologist Désiré Charnay, let him tell him and studied his work. In July 1914, his father died after a nervous breakdown. From 1914 to 1915 Charlot studied at the École nationale supérieure des beaux -arts de Paris ( ENSBA ), then went to Saint- Mandé and traveled through Brittany. During World War II he served from 1917 and during the subsequent occupation of the West German areas as Pferdeartillerist. At a height of 1 meter 65 his stature is described as athletic.
In 1920 he left the army as a second lieutenant and went to Mexico, where he had Numerous contacts and relatives by the relationship of the maternal line. Here he joined a circle of revolutionary artists, Fernando Leal studied with and assisted Diego Rivera on his mural " La Creación " in Mexico City. In 1922 he painted his first mural at the local Escuela Nacional Preparatoria entitled " La Masacre en el Templo Mayor", in which he portrayed the massacre in the Templo Mayor during the Spanish conquest. 1923 followed by three more murals on the Secretaría de Educación Pública (SEP ). After that, he continued to paint until 1925 in his so-called " dark period" mainly on the easel.
From 1926 to 1928 he worked as an artist at the archaeological research and excavations of the Carnegie Institution of Washington ( CIW) of Chichen Itza and then went to New York City a year later to Washington, D. C., where he collaborated with Earl Halstead Morris and Ann Axtell Morris worked on the lyrics and illustrations for 1931 issued by the CIW work on the Temple of Warriors Chichen Itza the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza. From 1930 he taught at the Art Students League of New York, and at Columbia University and learned a native of Los Angeles graphic artist Lynton Kistler Richards know. He also began at this time also with the illustration of children's books. In 1932 he published along with Harry Evelyn Dorr Pollock and John Eric Sidney Thompson under the title A preliminary study of the ruins of Coba, Quintana Roo, Mexico studies on the ruins of Coba and spent a year later, a photo strip with 32 lithographs with text contributions by Paul Claudel. In 1939 he married actress Dorothy Zohmah Day and in the same year Art from the Mayans to Disney published ( art of the Mayans to Disney). AUs marriage to Dorothy Zohmah the three sons Martin, John and Peter, and a daughter were born named Ann. From 1939 to 1940 he illustrated with 34 color images, a special edition of Prosper Mérimée Carmen. The book was printed by Albert Richardson Carman and published by the New York Limited Editions Club. In 1941 he received from the University of Georgia an Artist in Residence Fellowship and painted a year later, a mural at the post office of McDonough, Georgia, also 1942, one on the building of the Faculty of Fine Arts of the University of Georgia, where 1944 of the Faculty of journalism. As a Guggenheim Fellow, he went from 1945 to 1946 back to Mexico, where he wrote about the Mexican Muralsimus in his book, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920-1925, which was published in 1963 by Yale University Press. Under the title Mexihkanantli ( Nahuatl for Mexican mother), he published 16 resulting 1946-1947 Illustrations in Mexico City and was founded in 1947 in Colorado Springs Director of the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center School.
In 1949 he was a professor at the University of Hawaii to Honolulu, and painted there on the Bachmann - hall a mural. Among his students were the painter Kenneth O. Goehring and his son Martin Charlot. Appeared in 1950 in New York his book Making Art from Mexico to China. From 1951 to 1953 he painted murals at the administration building of the Arizona State College (now Arizona State University), to the branch of the First National Bank in Waikīkī and another at the Bachmann - hall of the University of Hawaii. In 1958 he worked on ceramic tile images in the St. Catherine 's Church on Kauai. Moreover originated from 1958 to 1963 more murals at St. Leonard Monastery of Centerville, Montgomery County, Ohio, at the monastery chapel of St. Benedict 's Abbey in Atchison, Kansas, and at the Catholic mission church building in Naiserelagi, Fiji. In 1962 he published on the University of Texas at Austin a treatise on Mexican art and the Academia de San Carlos in the period from 1785 until 1915. During his retirement in 1966, the Honolulu Academy of Arts held in his honor a solo exhibition titled Jean Charlot Retrospective, Fifty Years 1916-1966. In the same year be the mural painted on the bank building in Waikīkī after its destruction a second time and visited a year later for the first time since 1923, his hometown of Paris. As part of the cultural program on the occasion of the Summer Olympics 1968, he presented at the Museo de Arte Moderno in his paintings and was honored in the same year by the National Arts Council in Washington. In 1969 he worked at the University of Hawaii, along with Tony Smith and presented in Hanalei, Kauai County, a ceramic statue finished and founded in Honolulu a foundation. In 1972 he wrote an autobiographical essay for the University of Hawaii. In addition to two other murals at Leeward Community College (1974 ) in Pearl City, Oahu, and at the Maryknoll Elementary School (1978 ) in Honolulu, he published in 1973 together with Kistler in Los Angeles a second image band and wrote for the University of Hawaii in 1976 Two Hawaiian Plays ( ISBN 0824804996 ).
Charlot died after a battle with cancer.