Jean Penuel - My life

Dec 31 1936	born on a farm in Bézu St. Germain, near Paris
1952	Collège Technique, Chauny.
1953 und 1954	Cours par correspondance de Dessin d'Art, Paris.
1955 - 1956	Academy de la Grande Chaumiere prepare for acceptance at L'Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Appliques et des Metieres d'Art, Paris.
1957 - 1958	Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des Métiers d'Art, Paris.
1959 - 1960	Docent at the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Montparnasse 19, Paris (renowned for Picasso and Modigliani)
1961	Independent artist in Paris.
1962 - 1963	Graphic designer and commercial artist with the UGAP, Paris.
1971	Move from Paris to Germany.
1971 - 1976	Graphic designer. Throughout all the past years of employment created artistic works, successfully.
Since 1976	Independent artist and graphic designer.
2002	Move back to the Champagne in France.

Jean Penuel was born at New Year's Eve 1936 in Bézu St. Germain, near Paris. Having attended Academy of Arts in Paris, he became docent at the "Academy de la Grande Chaumiere", renowned for Picasso and Modigliani, in Paris at an age of 25. Soon he realized that working there as a reader would make it impossible to develop further artistically and that it had serious effect on his creativity. Therefore he gave up his position to make it possible to concentrate himself on his artistic work.

In 1971 he came to Mönchengladbach (Germany) where he lives and works up to the present. To learn the German language he started working as a commercial artist for five Years. Since 1976 he gave all his attention to his painting again. His artistic work gained great success in many places in Germany and international.

In the center of his opus there is the individual. The human beeing, according to his opinion, is related on one hand to nature and the real world, on the other hand is related to the cosmos, the mystic and the mysterious. Therfore also the pictures of Jean Penuel are a synthesis of reality and imagination, of the realistic and the abstract. Many pictures of the artist, most of all his portraits of women, have their special secret, carefully hidden with a hazy veil. These portraits really are not portraits in the common sense of the word; again and again the human beeing is related to nature, appear the painted bodies as tranquil minded individuals in keeping with nature. Their mask-like faces symbolize the detachement of universal sense from a particular human being. Stylistically, Jean Penuel is balancing on the edge between realistic tendencies, abstract views and very individual alienation effects. This artificial reality ist beyond the division of subject and object and therefore influences heart and soul by ist genius.

The great variety of formal features continues in coloration. Jean Penuel studied the formulas of the colours used by the ancient masters, made experiments and tests. On principle, he does not work with modern industrial colours but fabricates his own colours using his own formulas.

In Penuel's pictures the colours run into one another and so pictures of poetic sensitivity are created. The canvas is part of the picture. The colour gradation is the special fascination of his compositions. The achieved harmony is a result of his great expressiveness and his stylistic variety.

Jean Penuel's subtle painting techniques witness his enormous skill but their appearance is still nothing but mysterious.