Jean LEPPIEN: Geometric abstraction, Original signed screenprint

Screen print : Screen printing, also known as silkscreen, serigraphy, and serigraph printing - from latin "Sericum (silk) and greek "grapheion" (writing) - is a printing technique that uses a woven mesh to support an ink-blocking stencil to receive a desired image. The attached stencil forms open areas of mesh that transfer ink or other printable materials which can be pressed through the mesh as a sharp-edged image into a substrate. It is possible to use different meshes, for different colors, and create multi-colored works. In the field of art, it is important to know how many prints have been made. The total number of prints is usually written on the print (e.g 20/200).
Jean Leppien : (1910-1991) is a french artist of german origin, associated to the Bauhaus movement. He was born in 1910 in Lüneburg, as Kurt Leppien, and was a student of Josef Albers, Wassily Kandinsky and Joost Schmidt, and knew Paul Klee. When the nazi regime nominated Mies van der Rohe as the Bauhaus director, he left to Berlin, and started training with photography with László Moholy-Nagy. He was a member of the communist party. He left Germany in 1933 to go to Paris and changed his name to « Jean ». He survived of small jobs, and had no time for artistic creation. He enrolled in 1939 in foreign legion, and then resistance before being arrested. He was sentenced and imprisonned in the Bruchsal fortress. He was freed in 1944, and came back to Suzanne, his wife, who survived deportation. Starting from 1946, he regularly exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles.