ATLAN Jean-Michel

Jean-Michel ATLAN was a French painter born in Constantine (Algeria) in 1913 and died in Paris in 1960.

Of Judeo-Berber origin and an early Resistance fighter, he was stripped of his position as philosophy teacher at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris in 1940, and narrowly escaped the extermination camps. In 1941, he began painting, and in 1944 exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants in an Expressionist style.

In 1946, he joined the CoBrA movement and moved closer to Abstraction. His work is exhibited in numerous museums, and a major retrospective was held at the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 1980.