Jean Leppien (as Kurt Leppien ) was a German-French painter. Kurt Leppien studied from 1929 at the Bauhaus in Dessau with Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee. He lived since 1933 in France, from where he was deported in 1944. After the war, he remained under the name of Jean Leppien in France, where he among other things, the “Salon des Nouvelles Réalités exhibited”. Leppien is one of the most important representatives of geometric abstraction in France. Stylistically, he is such painters as Magnelli, Jean Deyrolle, Michel Seuphor, Emile Gilioli and Aurélie Nemours close.
Leppien for the resumption of the war in France was the real beginning of his artistic development, but the short duration of the study was the basis for him nevertheless become at the Dessau Bauhaus. Leppien and his wife Suzanne lived in Nice. He was able in 1946 to draw in difficult material conditions and begin to paint.
Leppien made contacts and friendships with artists of the “art abstrait” (including André Bloc, Heinrich Maria Davringhausen, Jean Deyrolle, Adolf Fleischmann, Richard Mortensen, Serge Poliakoff, Hans Reichel, Michel Seuphor, Pierre Soulages, Victor Vasarely ) and the critic Herta Wescher. He was a member of the ‘Salon des Nouvelles Réalités “, where he remained connected for life, and placed there regularly since 1946.
He participated in various group exhibitions, including 1947 in the Deux Iles Gallery in Paris, the art critic and promoter of the “art abstrait” Charles Estienne organized (Deyrolle, Leppien, Reichel, Sérusier, Springer). In 1948, Leppien received the Prix Kandinsky as “prix d’encouragement” next to the main winners Max Bill. With Kandinsky’s widow Nina he was in close contact. In 1949 he had his first solo exhibition at Colette Allendy. It was followed by numerous solo and group exhibitions such as in France, Italy, Switzerland, Belgium. Finally, the exhibition “Jean Leppien: From the Bauhaus to the Mediterranean” in 2013 in the Hamburg Kunsthalle. Leppien 1987 by the French Ministry of Culture has been an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres appointed