Jean Carzou (1907 - 2000)
Internationally renowned artist Jean Carzou, whose works graced the novels of literary giants like Ernest Hemmingway, adorned Paris opera houses and captured the passion of saints on chapel walls, died August 12, 2000 in Perigeaux, France.
Carzou mastered a number of mediums, though his line drawings and engravings would become well known as illustrations for William Shakespeare, Jules Verne works, as well as some of the 20th century's most revered writers, including Hemingway, Albert Camus, André Maurois, Ionesco and Rimbaud.
Carzou produced stunning work of painted glass and porcelain, in pencils, guache and pastels as well as oils, often choosing to work on textured or irregular fabrics and papers rather than traditional canvas. One of the artist's master works, completed in his 80s, was the Apocalypse of Saint Joan in the Chapel at Manosque in Vaucluse, France, which depicted not merely the passion of the saint and national hero, but the ravages of war.
Carzou's diverse talents were employed often by some of the most celebrated stages in Paris, and throughout the 1950s his set and costume designs appeared at the Comedie Francais as well as Paris Opera. Carzou also enjoyed sharing his art as an educator with the Paris Institute of Fine Arts, and he saw the establishment of the Carzou Foundation in 1991, at the age of 84.
Over the course of his long career, which began with his first formal exhibition in 1939, Carzou received many honors throughout the world, including 3 Hallmark Prizes for painting, Japan's Education Prize, Brussells' Grand Prize of Europe, and the Grand Prize of the Ile de France. In 1976 Carzou became the first living artist to have his work appear on a French postage stamp.