Jean Lambert-Rucki

Jean Lambert-Rucki was a sculptor and a painter born in Cracow, Poland in 1888. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Cracow before he moved to Paris in 1911. He was mobilized in World War I, and after the war he settled in the Montparnasse district. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1932.

In Paris, he associated with his friend Moise Kisling, also born in Cracow, Poland, along with Modigliani, Soutine, and the other artists of Montparnasse.

Lambert-Rucki exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1919, and he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants beginning in 1920, as well as the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Tuileries from 1933. He also showed with the Cubists at the Section d'Or group from 1922 to 1924. He exhibited, from 1924, at the gallery of Léonce Rosenberg, Galerie l'Effort Moderne.

Lambert-Rucki had been friends with Leopold Survage before the war, and in about 1919 they met again. They both exhibited at Galerie l'Effort Moderne and the Section d'Or, and the similarities in their paintings are striking. They both used a small shadowy figure in their paintings for many years. Many people have argued who was the first to do so, but like Picasso and Broque, who painted works that were indistinguishable from each other's, it hardly matters.

He achieved his greatest successes in his collaboration with furniture designer Jean Dunand, whom he met in 1923. Lambert-Rucki's designs for Dunand's lacquered furniture were at the height of the Art Deco movement.

In 1930, Lambert-Rucki was invited to participate in the first exhibition of l'Union des Artistes Modernes, where he continued to show his works in subsequent years. He was later represented in the Pavillon de l'Union des Artistes Moderne at l'Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1937. He executed many wall sculpture and masks, and also exhibited jewelry designs that were produced by master jeweler Jean Fouquet and shown in the Pavillon de la Lumiére.

Lambert-Rucki worked in several different styles. He painted Cubist cityscapes, and many works influenced by the Tribal Art of Africa. His Cubist and primitive styles translated well into his vast production of sculpture.