Jean Lamber-Rucki was born on September 17, 1888 in Cracow, Poland. Son of a polish father and a mother who belonged to the old Hungarian aristocracy, Lambert-Rucki grew up in a comfortable home, in a country continually torn apart by Czarist and Austrian occupation. Because of all the violence, he was often sent to the Carpathians when he was young. Lambert-Rucki often tried to escape his parents’ vigilance by running away with the gypsies and sharing their nomadic lives. An overwhelming need for liberty and his refusal to bend to any limits or constraints marked the life and works of the painter and sculptor Jean Lambert-Rucki. Art was the one path which led him to liberty.

In 1906 he enrolled in Cracow Fine Arts School studying under Joseph Pankiewicz who was also the teacher of his friend Moise Kisling. Excited about the Gauguin exhibition in Cracoq, he went to France in February of 1911. At the age of 23 he arrived in Paris, welcomed by Kisling who introduced him to the settings of Montmarte and Montparnasse. He started attending the Colorossi Academy and became friends with Amadeo Modigliani. This meeting in 1912-13 was of capital importance. They lived together and shared a workshop together. Modigliani’s sculptures of African tribal art influenced the youthful period of Lambert-Rucki. At the Salon d’Automne of 1913, next to Modigliani’s works, Lambert-Rucki’s first catalogued work was exhibited.

During the next four years Lambert-Rucki joined the French Army and in 1918 after WWI, he returned to Montparnasse. Here he met Monique Bickel, the sculptor and student of Rodin, whome he married in 1920. Lambert-Rucki’s works for the 1920s were imbued with the cubism of Fernand Leger, called “tubism.” The city and circus were his main inspirations. His themes were of human forms, poetic silhouettes strolling in the street. In March of 1920, Lambert-Rucki exhibited with Section d’Or, founded by Archipenko and Lambert-Rucki’s pre-war friend Survage, at the Boetie gallery. Among the first to take notice of his work was dealer and critic Leonce Rosenberg, owner of Effort Moderne gallery. From 1920-26 Lambert-Rucki did pen and ink drawings and several mosaic wood sculptures, difference variations on the theme of “la Foule” for the Effort Moderne gallery. During this period Lambert-Rucki began to present his works regularly at the Salon d’Automne and the Salon des Independants. He became an active member of the Union des Artistes Moderne in 1931 and along with other members such as Sonia Delaunay, Csaky and Miklos, he exhibited at the Pavillon de Marsan, the George Petit gallery and the Renaissance

gallery until the 1950s. At the 1937 World Fair he worked together with Mallet-Stevens and Le Corbusier decorating the entry to the UAM pavillon with their sculptures, while the interior boasted the works of Leger, Gleizes, Survage and Picasso. Ten years of close associations with the great creators of his time imbued Lambert-Rucki’s work with a new humanism. As of 1938 Lambert-Rucki’s work moved toward expressionism. With the rise of Fascism and WWII, the world appeared to him as a violent resurgence of the irrational. He moved away from the refined and elegant craftsmanship, returning to a raw, primitive art. He spent most his remaining years working with architect Vidal on the restoration of several landmarks ruined by the war. From 1955 until his death in 1967, Lambert-Rucki worked uninterruptedly in his workshop called “my laboratory.” He died as he lad lived, discretely, in his workshop in Montparnasse.

Jean Lambert-Rucki is one of those creators who lived to create. He was tormented by the need to invent. He participated in Cubism but knew enough to get out in time. Is he a surrealist? Yes, if one judges by some of his sculptures. Is he essentially an expressionist, poetic and lyrical? Yes, but he is everything together. He is profoundly, very sincerely himself, and because he refused to belong to any school, his work is original. IN his Cubist sculptures, those he created while working in association with Zadkine, one can see a different orientation and the originality of an eternally tender poet. He has an imperious need for simplification, an unlimited desire to return to the sources of primitive creation. His work is rich and diverse. His whimsy is never disorderly; his humor is neither sarcastic nor cruel. He tried every material: wood, stone, marble, plaster, and bronze, and color, and his sculptures were polychromed. In the words of Georges-Henri Pingusson, “…it’s by looking at Lambert-Rucki’s work in all its environments that one can benefit from his plentitude.”