Jean Lambert-Rucki
1888 - 1967

Lambert-Rucki was born in Cracow, Poland in 1888. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Cracow before he moved to Paris in 1911. He was mobilized in World War One, after the war he settled in the Montparnasse district. He became a naturalized French citizen in 1932.
In Paris he associated with his friend, also born in Cracow, Poland Moise Kisling, along with Modigliani, Soutine, and the other artists of Montparnasse. Lambert-Rucki exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in 1919, he exhibited regularly at the Salon des Indépendants beginning in 1920, the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Tuileries from 1933. He also showed with the Cubists at the Section d’Or group from 1922 to1924. He exhibited, from 1924, at the gallery of Léonce Rosenberg, Galerie l‘Effort Moderne.

Lambert-Rucki had been friends with Leopold Survage before the war, in about 1919 they met again. They both exhibited at Galerie l’Effort Moderne and the Section d’Or, the similarities in their paintings are striking. They both used a small shadowy figure in their paintings for many years. Many people have argued who was the first to do so, but like Picasso and Broque who painted works that were indistinguishable from each other’s, it hardly matters.In 1930 Lambert-Rucki was invited to participate in the first exhibition of l’Union des Artistes Modernes, where he continued to show his works in subsequent years.

Lambert-Rucki was represented in the Pavillon de l’Union des Artistes Moderne at l’Exposition Universalle in Paris in 1937, He executed many wall sculpture and masks. He also exhibited jewelry designs that were produced by master jeweler Jean Fouquet, and shown in the Pavillon de la Lumiére.

Lambert-Rucki was a sculptor and a painter; he achieved his greatest successes in his collaboration with furniture designer Jean Dunand where he met in 1923. Lambert-Rucki designs for Dunand’s lacquered furniture was at the height of the Art Deco movement.

Lambert-Rucki worked in several different styles, he painted Cubist cityscapes, and many works influenced by the Tribal Art of Africa, his Cubist and primitive styles translated well into his vast production of sculpture.