Jean Pierre Serrier

Jean Pierre Serrier (18 October 1934 – 30 March 1989) was a French painter known for surrealism and absurdist art. He was born in the Montparnasse district of Paris, the son of Louis and Solange Serrier. His father fought in World War II and became a prisoner of war. In 1940, as a six-year-old, he and his mother fled Paris for Corrèze in southwest France. Childhood memories of close escapes from German bombardments would later influence his absurdist philosophy of life. Passionate about drawing, in 1951 he applied and was admitted to the École nationale supérieure des arts appliqués et des métiers d'art in Paris. He shared an attic apartment in the 16th arrondissement with fellow student Jean-Baptiste Valadié. For income, he decorated shop windows. A trip to Spain provided motifs for early works. His student work might be characterized as art naïf. While still a student, he sold a ceramic artwork to the poet and publisher Pierre Seghers, who would later commission drawings from him. He frequented jazz clubs in Saint-Germain des Près, and while listening to Sidney Bechet at the Vieux Colombier, he met his wife, Yvette. After graduating in 1955, he was drafted for military service, spent time in Germany and Morocco, and was sent to the front lines of the Algerian War. Thus he experienced war both as a child and as a young soldier, and returnedpsychologically traumatized by the war in Algeria. This moral wound expressed itself in nightmares...The apocalyptic side of his [later] paintings would reflect his uneasiness and his unresolved traumas. By making fun of the most serious things, his acute sense of black humor allowed him to survive. At the end of 1957, he returned to Paris. Pierre Seghers commissioned him to draw some thirty illustrations for Chansons et Complaintes, a collection of poems published in 1959. That same year, he exhibited works at two Parisian galleries and at Juan-les-Pins on the Côte d'Azur. From 1961, he exhibited annually at the Salon des Artistes Français.