Jean-Paul Mansour

Born in Beirut, Lebanon in 1956, and has lived in Paris, France since 1981.


Jean Paul Mansour was always attracted by arts, but also sciences, in particular astronomy, passion which is revealed in some of his paintings.


Since his childhood, it has affected his drawing. It is after his arrival in France that he began painting, initially by tests with the acrylic resin then quickly passing to oil.


Constantly in the search of a Master, he does not wish to integrate a school. He surveys the museums and especially that of the Louvre, where he found his mentor, Paul Mantes, great painter and copyist. This 65 year old Master introduces Jean-Paul to Flemish techniques.


He did very few exposures, because he likes to only work in his workshop. He refuses to confine himself to only one subject, this is why he paints planets, landscapes Lebanese, Corsican, and even of the particular paintings carried out on order.


He continues to live in Paris and paints for the satisfaction of his composition. He is also an author of poems.


Collective exposures:


July 1987 Denver (Colorado)
Exposure on the topic of the horses

November 1988 Patterson (New Jersey)
Exposure on the topic of the American houses

June 1989 Brandford (Ontario)
Exposure on the topic of the revolts of the Indians of America

May 1993 Paris (France)
Lebanese Arts centre

Individual Exposure:

August 1994 Paris (France)
Egyptian Arts centre



Artists Statement:


If one asked how I work and see my paining I would say:
I leave time to the matter. When I paint, I work my funds by superposition of layers and colors, which can take me several days spaced by the rest of the matter. A blue sky is not a blue leaving the tube, but a whole of surfaces applied with values and colors which come to supplement the required goal. I do not touch necessarily the final subject which constitutes the center of my fabric, but modify the funds in order to project a considered color which will influence my principal subject. The superposition of the layers called in washing, allows the penetration of the light until touching the fabric, then restoring the colors with an effect of depth and vibration. All things considered, in my work, the local, tonal and considered colours determine the whole of the color of a precise subject. I am not against what one calls today, freedom of expression in any form of art whatever it is, but I will always defend the rules which enable us to express our compositions.

Indeed, I always regarded art as a science. - The science of arts - . In what relates to me, art is not free like one tends to see it nowadays. Art is a science which is worked with much perseverance. An anecdote illustrates this matter well: One brought to Rubens a young man who wanted to make painting. - It can paint well, it would help you to carry out the funds of your paintings. According to what is brought back to us, Rubens pretends the astonishment and admiration. - It can make the funds! Bring immediately it to me, because that made of the years that I try to make the funds and I still have much evil!

When one sees works of art - worthy of this name - one forgets all work, perseverance, efforts, even tears of the artist.
Art is a science which always existed in the concept of the universe. It is subject to rules coming from eternity. The artist does nothing but discover these concepts. He does not create anything, but its genius lies in the composition, the assembly of what is placed at his disposal. In fact, nothing is free. Admittedly there are people who are born with a gift, but the gift is a heritage of the existence, not parents. As known as Gibran Khalil Gibran "the love is even satisfied with him and need for anybody does not have". I think that art is satisfied to be and nothing of anyone waits. What I try to say, it is that many people, boasting in their content, put art at their service. However I think that the man is at the disposal of art. He is the servant of poetry, painting, the music, any science or artistic science, because any music exists in the universe, any form artistic, geometrical, any color, any song are only one assembly of the elements original of what "" and is placed at our disposal, and free to us to discover the language and the assembly of it. I insist on perseverance, because to use siccative Flemish is not acquired in an evening. To make its own mixture of terpentine and Flemish, linseed oil siccative, is not only one recipe which one applies, but a wild proportioning that one learns how to tame with time. Such was the work of old. I believe in addition in any modern painting, nothing of all that, but in modern subjects, the evolution of the thought, consequently of art and sciences. Today, we better a quality to pictorial texture, but which modernism did one gave bring? Freedom of the expression? but which freedom? Have freedom in mathematics to say that two parallels meet and you will see, in theory, all the trains running off the line. The same applies in all arts. Rules of construction and color as of the forms are laid down before the existence of the man; me, I will discover them and not invent them.