Jean Jansem
Hovhannes “Jean” Semerdjian (1920–2013), commonly known as Jean Jansem, was a internationally known French–Armenian painter. Jansem's artworks are included in museum collections throughout France, Japan, Armenia, and the United States. He became a Foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia in 2002 and was awarded the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1953 and by the Knight of the French legion of Honour in 2003.
Born in Bursa, in the then Ottoman Empire, his family fled to Greece in 1922. He spent his childhood in Thessaloniki, subsequently moving to a suburb of Paris in 1931, where he first began to paint. From 1934 on, he studied at the free academies of Mantparnasse, the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs, and at the Sabatie studio. He won the Comparison Prize in Mexico in 1958. He has had numerous international exhitions, and, in 2001, a suite of 34 of his paintings were donated to Tsitsernakaberd, the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan, Armenia.
His primary influences were Breughel and Goya, and critics characterized him as a miserablist, an artist of unfortunate people. Jansem died in 2013 just outside of Paris.