2. Artists & stock
3. Amédée Ozenfant
4. Biography

Notes of biography

Born in the north of France in 1886, Amédée Ozenfant learnt to draw at the Quentin-La Tour Municipal School in Saint Quentin, his hometown. He moves to Paris in 1907, works in an architectural office and attends the Palette Academy. He exhibits at the Salon d’Automne in 1910.
From 1909 to 1913, he takes many trips to Russia, Italy, Belgium, Holland, etc. Unfit for military service in the First World War, he founds the revue ‘Elan’ and creates ties between the mobilised artists and those, like him, who were not participating in the war. During this period, his style is cubist, then futurist and abstract. He wants to rise above these phases and begins research ‘for a more pure art form’.
In 1917, Ozenfant, meets the architect and painter Charles-Edouard Jeanneret (Le Corbusier). The Thomas Gallery in Paris organizes the first purist exhibition in 1917. In 1918, he publishes with Le Corbusier, the Purist manifesto: ‘After Cubism’. Ozenfant is cofounder, in 1920, of the revue ‘L’Esprit Nouveau’ (The New Spirit), a revue of the purist movement.
In 1924, he opens with Fernand Léger a studio in Paris, a studio that Alexandra Exter and Marie Laurecin get involved in. From 1925-1929, Ozenfant teaches at the Modern Academy in Paris. He starts to detach himself from purism. His first solo exhibition is organized in 1928. The artist founds the Academy of Art, in his own name, in 1932 in Paris, then in 1936 one in London.
Like other artists, he emmigrates to the United States on the eve of the Second World War and founds in New York the Ozenfant School of Fine Arts. Ozenfant takes American nationality in 1944, that he gives up in 1955, on his return to France. He paints views of the sky and uncluttered architecture. Ozenfant publishes numerous books on art and on art theories and he becomes an authority on these subjects.
He opens his last studio in Cannes, the town where he dies in 1966.

“From its origin, I have refused to limit purism to an aesthetic: I would like that this is not a way of doing but a way of thinking and feeling, in sum a philosophy, an ethos.” - Amédée Ozenfant

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