Jean GORIN

Biography

Jean Gorin was the youngest of a family of four children, with his father working as a cobbler. In 1910, his family moved to Nort-sur-Erdre, near Nantes. After failing his primary school certificate in 1912, he began a professional apprenticeship in Nantes and later in Paris, where he studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. In 1916, he was mobilized in Nantes and went to the front lines after a few months. He completed his military service on the banks of the Rhine in 1918.

In 1919, he became a student at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nantes. He settled in Nort-sur-Erdre in 1922, where he pursued a professional career while continuing to paint. During a trip to Paris in 1922, he made his first contacts with early Cubist works. After a Cubist period, he created his first abstract work in 1925 and discovered the work of Piet Mondrian in 1926.

He designed polychrome and neo-plastic furniture for his home in Nort-sur-Erdre, applying Mondrian's principles of abstract art to the modern world, especially in architecture. He developed his ideas in the field of relief from 1930 onwards, followed by constructions in space, and eventually architectural projects. In 1932, he traveled to the Soviet Union, invited by a group of intellectuals and artists, where he discovered Russian Constructivism. In 1934, he became a member of the steering committee of the Abstraction-Création association, founded in 1931. He moved to Le Vésinet in 1937, sold his house in Nort-sur-Erdre, and destroyed a large part of his work. He was mobilized in 1939 and became a prisoner of war until 1942.

Between 1940 and 1945, Jean Gorin also stayed in Grasse, where he managed a decorative objects store. Later, he successively settled in Grasse (1947) and in Nice for health reasons in 1950, where he developed neo-plastic architectural projects until 1956. Finally, he moved to Le Perreux in 1962, and later to Meudon.

He created sculptures, or rather scale models of sculptures that he photographed before destroying them, as he couldn't keep them in his cramped studio. His art diverged from Mondrian's by introducing relief, gradually evolving into true wall sculpture. Unlike Mondrian's strict neoplasticism, he introduced the circle and later the oblique line while maintaining horizontal-vertical rigor.

Jean Gorin passed away in 1981.