Jean Théodore Dupas (21 February 1882 – 6 September 1964) was a French painter, artist, designer, poster artist, and decorator in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles.
Dupas was born in Bordeaux.[1] During his lifetime he would work as a designer, poster artist, and decorator, and in 1910 he won the Prix de Rome. Afterward, he would continue to paint in the Italian city for two years, completing “Le Danse”, the predecessor for his painting “Les Pigeons Blanc” (The White Pigeons) which was awarded the gold medal when it was presented at the Salon des Artistes Français.[2]
In 1925, Dupas' work would come to define the Art Deco movement and the school of Bourdeaux. That year he participated at the Grand Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris where he exhibited “Les Perruches” (also known as The Parrots or The Parakeets), which has become one of the most recognizable painting of the Art Deco movement which flourished between the two world wars, was at its highpoint at this exhibition and culminated at the New York World’s Fair in 1939.
The Dupas style dominates the advertisment and commercial art for the entire period. In fact, he realized a great quantity of advertising works which appeared even in fashion magazines like Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar and, in 1927, he even created a catalog for Max, which is considered a “masterpiece of press advertisement”.
Dupas has worked in various exponents of the Nouveau and Deco areas, such as the fashion magazine Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. In 1925 at the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes in Paris, he showed Les Perruches, one of his most famous oil on canvas. In 1927, with the aide of French printing house, he conceived a catalogue for the fur company Max.[3]
In the 1930s, Dupas was commissioned by Frank Pick to produce the artwork for a series of posters for the underground network of London Transport.
Dupas expressed his predilection for large-scale projects: "The bigger my work, the happier I am." Thus his collaboration in the decor of famous steamships during the 1930s, emphasizing the Art Deco mode of the time. Among these works, the SS Île-de-France and the SS Liberté were among the first. In 1934, Dupas created fabulous glass panels, used by Charles Champigneulle for the corners of the Normandie's first-class Grand Salon representing the history of navigation, using a technique known as verre églomisé in which portions of the pictorial scene were painted in black and various pastel colors on the reverse of plate-glass panels. Just over twenty feet in height, his part of this mural is now exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[4]
But in 1935, with the help of glass master Champigneulle, he decorated the grand salon of the Normandie, in more than 400 square meters of painted and frosted glass.
He became a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in 1941.[5] [6] [7]