Jean Lambert-Rucki

He exhibited at the 1913 Salon d'Automne in Paris; from 1919 was represented by both Léonce Rosenberg at the Galerie de l'Effort Moderne and the art dealer Paul Guillaume.

[1] Enthused by an exhibition of works by Gauguin in Kraków, he decided to go to Paris and arrived one morning in February 1911 with 17 Francs in his pocket.

There he met Chaïm Soutine, Léopold Survage, Tsuguharu Foujita, Blaise Cendrars, Max Jacob and Amedeo Modigliani; who he shared a room with at 8 rue de la Grande-Chaumière in Montparnasse, a studio rented to them by the Polish poet, writer and art dealer Léopold Zborowski.

He later made copies of the mosaics of Sainte Sophie de Salonique for the Louvre under the direction of Jean Guiffrey the Curator for the Department of Painting, Musées nationaux.

Further support for the endeavor came from Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Georges Braque, Constantin Brâncuși, Henri Laurens, Jacques Villon, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Louis Marcoussis, Joseph Csaky, Léopold Survage and Jean Lambert-Rucki.

[1] From 1925 to the end of his life, Lambert-Rucki exhibited his works, many of which were commissioned, throughout Europe, Canada and the United States, and churches (large renovations after the Great War).

The same year, he collaborated with Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann and Jean Dunand for the International Exposition of Modern Industrial and Decorative Arts of 1925, the exhibition that epitomized what came to be called decades later Art Deco, a "modern" style characterized by a streamlined geometric and symmetric compositions, and a sleek machine-age look.

In 1931, he became an active member of the Union des Artistes Modernes (UAM), where he exhibited alongside René Herbst, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier), Robert Mallet-Stevens, the architect Georges-Henri Pingusson, Jean Fouquet (for whom he made jewelry), in exhibits that emphasized design over decoration.

Jean Lambert-Rucki, 1919, La Visite , 65 x 92 cm, Musée des Années 30, Boulogne-Billancourt, Dépôt du Centre Georges Pompidou , MNAM, Paris