Jean Leppien Biography
The painter, lithographer, illustrator Jean Leppien was born in Lunebourg, Germany, in 1910. He died in Paris in 1991. He was naturalized French in '53. The artist began drawing in '27. He was a student at the Bauhaus School (Dessau) in 1929, where Albers, Klee and Kandinsky were his professors. In Berlin (1931-32) he worked with Moholy-Nagy and learned photography at the Itten School. When Nazism came to power he fled Germany and settled in Paris (1933). He lives by his wits. In '39 Leppien, thirsty for freedom and attached to his adopted country, enlisted in the Foreign Legion. Demobilized, he lived in hiding for a certain period (Roquebrune on the French Riviera) then joined the Resistance. Arrested, deported, freed by the allies, he finds his wife in Paris, herself a survivor of Auschwitz. Painting had been abandoned, Leppien resumed it in '46. He exhibited at the first Salone delle Realtà Nuove and became a member of the committee. He will be attentive to the presentation of the constructivist movement in which he will exhibit until the end. His life as an artist is dotted with collective and personal exhibitions, the first in Paris in 1949, the last in 2005 at the Castle-Museum of Cagnes-sur-mer on the French Riviera. Also noteworthy is an important retrospective in '97 in Paris at the Lahumière Gallery.
