Jean Paul Brusset

Who was Jean Paul Brusset?

Jean Paul Brusset was an internationally acclaimed painter with what has been described as "a strong Mediterranean flair". He was born in Pont du Gard, near Nîmes, in Provence, France.

In 1929, after completing his higher education at the college in Uzès, Brusset travelled to Paris where he enrolled at L'École des Arts Appliqués et des Arts Decoratifs and sold his first painting, Le Pont d'Avignon. He went on to exhibit in major galleries such as the Salon des Tuileries and soon earned his first special exhibition. In the preface to the exhibition catalogue Tristan Bernard commended him as "A good painter and a true interpreter of nature".

During the difficult economic times of the 1930s Brusset survived as a decorator, most notably at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1938 he married Marika Rivera, the daughter of the Russian émigré cubist painter Marie Vorobieff and the Mexican cubist painter and muralist Diego Rivera; and they had a son together named Jean Diego Brusset. The marriage did not last long.

On the outbreak of World War II in 1939 Brusset was called up to the French Navy. In 1942, he left France for Algiers, where he decorated the studio of the Voice of America. An exhibition in Tunis followed. In 1945 he returned to Paris and re-established himself there with an exhibition in 1946. In L'Amateur d'Art, there was reference to his "hitherto much ignored talent"; and he was being admired as a "true painter" with a "serious heart", a "profound interior life".