French sculptor, painter, designer, coppersmith and lacquer maker Jean Dunant, considered one of the greatest designers of the Art Deco period, was born in Switzerland in 1877. His father was a gold smelter in a watch shop. In 1891, at the age of 14, Jean entered the School of Industrial Arts in Geneva, where he studied drawing and sculpture and graduated in 1895. Thanks to a grant from the city of Geneva received in 1897, he moved to Paris. There he initially worked as an apprentice carver in his uncle’s workshop.

From 1898, Dunant attended evening classes with the sculptor Jean Dampe at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs, where he thoroughly studied the properties of a variety of sculptural materials: wood, stone, ivory, wrought iron and precious metals. The following year he opened his own studio on rue Halle in the 14th arrondissement of Paris, where he worked until his death.

Throughout his artistic career, Jean Dunant was interested in various artistic techniques and excelled in many of them: sculpture, painting, jewelry, coppersmithing, lacquer, mosaics, interior decoration. For almost fifty years, Jean Dunant created more than 1,200 works.

After studying in Geneva and Paris, Jean Dunant created many bronze sculptures. At the 1900 World’s Fair he received a gold medal for his sculpture “Quo vadis”. Soon a new stage began in the work of Jean Dunant, in which he devoted himself to the technique of metalworking, a craft of great technical complexity, requiring physical dedication and artistic sensitivity. This technique is called dinanderi, the art of forging products from a single sheet of metal. The technique takes its name from the Flemish city of Dinan, which was well known for the production of copper products since the Middle Ages. He learned to create artistic forms (vases, flowerpots) with figures of plants or animals in the Art Nouveau style. These works were a great success, some of them inlaid with gold, silver or mother-of-pearl. At the International Exhibition in Milan in 1906 he received a gold medal for his copper products.

With the beginning of the twentieth century, Dunant began to accept orders for decorating private mansions (panel carvings and furniture). In 1909 he became a member of the Society of Decorative Artists and subsequently participated in all of its annual salons.

In 1912, Jean Dunant became acquainted with the technique of varnishing thanks to the Japanese master Seizo Sugawara (1884-1937), who lived in Paris since 1906. Varnish became his most favorite material, which he used on metal and wood for his own works (panels or screens) and carried out orders from other decorators.

In 1924, Jean Dunant began collaborating with fashion houses (Paul Poiret, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeanne Lanvin, Jean-Philippe Worth), developing designs for jewelry and accessories with silver inlays and lacquer finishes.

At the 1925 Exhibition of Decorative Arts, which gave its name to the Art Deco style, four monumental vases by Jean Dunant decorated the courtyard of the Arts and Crafts Pavilion. In 1932, during his annual exhibition at the Galerie Petit, he exhibited his work as a mosaic artist for the first time.

During the interwar period, Dunant’s lacquer work reached such a degree of sophistication and originality that he became an extremely sought after Art Deco artist. His lacquer panels decorated the interiors of such luxury transatlantic liners as the Ile-de-France and L’Atlantique. For the liner “Le Normandie” Dunant created an impressive ensemble of more than 1200 m² of five large panels (6 m high and 5.80 m wide) on the theme “The Games and Joys of Man”, sculpted in the form of a bas-relief, covered with gold varnish and paints . For the Museum of the Colonies, Dunant created ten large lacquer panels, which can still be seen in the Porte Doré (Golden Gate) palace.

Dunant, who married Marguerite Moutardier in 1906, had six children, including Bernard (1908-1998) and Pierre (1914-1996), who also became famous lacquer painters. His third son was killed at the age of 22 on June 20, 1940, and one of the squares in Paris is named in his honor.