|
Jean Cocteau
Life Time
5 July 1889 - 11 October 1963
|
The famous French poet, novelist, playwright, film director and essayist Jean Cocteau was also endowed with an outstanding talent as a draftsman and painter. Remaining always a poet, he sought throughout the entire creative path to embody his images not only in the word, but also in the visual arts. Cocteau was born in the town of Mason-Luffitt located near Paris. His formation as an artist occurred in the 1910s under the influence of the performances of Russian ballet, the music of I. Stravinsky,
more
The famous French poet, novelist, playwright, film director and essayist Jean Cocteau was also endowed with an outstanding talent as a draftsman and painter. Remaining always a poet, he sought throughout the entire creative path to embody his images not only in the word, but also in the visual arts. Cocteau was born in the town of Mason-Luffitt located near Paris. His formation as an artist occurred in the 1910s under the influence of the performances of Russian ballet, the music of I. Stravinsky, the painting of Picasso and the poetry of G. Apollinaire. It was Cocteau with his diverse talents and sensitivity to everything new that inspired many artistic endeavors of the era, primarily in the field of theater and music. As a schedule Cocteau appeared at the turn of the 1910s and 1920s, when Cubism was replaced by a return to nature, but on a different basis than before. Drawing was for the French artist a similarity of writing; not what was seen from nature, but what was experienced and meaningful was transferred to paper. Cocteau's poetry developed from Odadaism (Poems, 1920) to Surrealism (the collection Opera, 1927). A versatile gifted artist, Cocteau tried himself in cinematography - he was staged the paintings Beauty and the Beast (1946), Orpheus (1950) and Orpheus' Testament (1960). All of Cocteau’s work is the search for the “true line” (which in the figurative sense of the word was his goal in literature), which conveys the essence of things.