Biography

Jean Puy was a French painter and member of the Fauvist movement. Working alongside artists such as Henri Matisse and André Derain, Puy developed a bright palette based on the emotional interpretation of world instead of observed reality. Though his paintings never became as radical as some of the other Fauves—his work notably maintained subdued tonal harmonies and a sense of three-dimensional form—he was still considered pioneering in his use of bright hues. “Colors!” he once wrote. “Engaging, captivating, bewitching, coaxing, entrancing, ravishing colors! It seems we'll never stop feasting our eyes on them.” Born on November 8, 1876 in Roanne, France, the artist went on to study at the Académie Julian in Paris and exhibit at the Salon de Indédependants and Salon d’Automne with other Fauves in 1905. Today, his paintings are in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, among others. Puy died on March 6, 1960 in Roanne, France.