Jean-Claude Mayodon was born in Fontainebleau, France, in 1938 and died in Montreal on July 23, 1981. The talent of this prodigious and prolific artist was recognized at the early age of fourteen when he was awarded the First Prize of Ile-de-France (1952). This prize enabled him to move to Paris and study at the Académie des beaux-arts of Paris (1957-1961). He was accepted later to the famous École Du Louvre from which he graduated with a Ph.D. in Art History (1962). His unique style made him one of the biggest "exuberant impressionists". He painted subjects as French rural landscapes, still lives, bouquets, farm and city workers, clowns and occasionally horses who were depicting his different states of mind. During his short but flashing career, he managed to impose his works in numerous public collections: Houston Space Program, The Center of Medical Research of the University of Montreal and in French museums: le Musée de la Ville de Paris, the Galerie de Guerre Museum, the Sceaux Museum and the National Library of Paris. Art critics compared Mayodon to French painters of the beginning of the XXth century such as Danty, Vlaminck and Cézanne. Although he considered himself as a "social expressionist" artist, one can indubitably consider Jean-Claude Mayodon as a painter endowed with a limitless creative energy under the imprint of an exuberant impressionism. Lamoureux Ritzenhoff Gallery is proud to have curated his first posthumous special exhibition to greet the artistic work of this important Montreal painter - in duet with Paul Soulikias, R.C.A. (2006) - who bequeathed an important artistic inheritance to Canada without any other comparison.
Jean-Claude Mayodon lived and studied successively in Spain, Germany, Austria and Scandinavia before settling in Montréal during the 1967 World Exhibition.
Jean-Claude Mayodon was qualified as one of the great "exuberant impressionists."
Mr. Ken Mattingly II, of the Houston Space Program, who acquired one of Mayodon's paintings entitled Arles, resumes very well the influence and quality of the artist
"With each passing day its presence grows on us and serves as a constant source of enjoyment and as an eloquent reminder of the indefinable human element known as talent."
(Fontainebleau, France, 1938 - Montreal, Canada, 1981)
