Jean Hanau (France, 1899-?)
Pueblo Indian Group, New Mexico 1928

Oil on canvas
26 x 32 inches

Signed Jean Hanau & dated 1928 New Mexico, at lower left
Good condition

Provenance:
Bernheim Gallery, Paris, 1929

Private Collection, Chicago

Jean Hanau was singled out as an artist of talent from the age of 13 when he exhibited for the first time at the 1913 Salon of Independents in Paris. Continuing into his teens and early twenties, he exhibited at the Salon of the Tuileries and at the important Salon D'Automne in the company of Matisse, Rouault, Marquet, and Bonnard. Hanau exhibited in and was greatly influenced by the legendary 1925 Paris International Exposition of Art Deco, which announced the discovery of this style. He was one of the first artists to create both painting and sculpture in a French Art Deco style.

In 1928, Hanau traveled to New Mexico and painted a series of paintings of the Pueblo Indians in the Art Deco style. In 1929, to much acclaim, he exhibited his Indian paintings at the Bernheim Gallery in Paris. This exhibition was influential in establishing the milieu of the American Indian as an important matrix from which the Art Deco movement evolved in both design and subject matter. Hanau's paintings of Indians from this period are rarely available and most probably remain in private collections in France. None are known to be in museum collections in the United States.

Hanau exhibited during the 1920s and 1930s at various galleries in Paris, including: Devambez, Drouant, and Simonson. He participated in important exhibitions in various places where he settled for periods of time, among them: "French Artists in Brussels" and "The Artistic Circle of Barcelona". Hanau's teachers, at different periods, were Fernand Cormon at the Beaux-Arts and at the Studio of sculptor Filippo Colarossi in Paris and Rome. Hanau also painted in the United States, possibly circa 1940s-50s in New York and elsewhere. 

Hanau's artistic circle included Louis-Francois Biloul (1874-1947), Bernard Naudin (1876-1940), Charles Guerin (1875-1939), and C.A. Picart Le Doux (1881-1959). Jean Hanau's paintings are held in the collections of notable French museums, including The Museum of Modern Art (Paris) and the Museum of Decorative Art (Paris).

Fred R. Kline