Alfred JANNIOT
1889 - 1969
Alfred Janniot was born in Paris into a modest family. He seems very young to show real dispositions for drawing and modeling and integrates the School of Fine Arts in Paris in the class of Jean-Antoine Injalbert. Like many other artists, he was mobilized in 1914 and emerged from this war deeply scarred.
In 1919, he won the Prix de Rome, a competition that remained dormant during the Great War, tied with Raymond Delamarre. The theme of the competition:Glory bringing the hero back to the family hearth".
A Prix de Rome propels an artist to notoriety. Alfred Janniot is one of them and will have to respond to public commissions throughout his career.
He participated in the International Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925 and was very successful. He will go through the crisis of the 1930s without difficulty and will be definitively dubbed after the realization of the monumental bas-relief of the facade of the Museum of the colonies.
He then produced a multitude of masterpieces in collaboration with many architects: Niermans, Viard and Dondel, Roux-Spitz, ... And always with the same principle, coherence and cohesion with the buildings on which he worked.
He will remain one of the greatest representatives of Art Deco, a master of mural art. The one who succeeds with the most talent in making between architecture and sculpture.