User:Paulina.arguelles/Jean Marie Fiori



FIORI JEAN-MARIE(Born in 1952) Jean-Marie FIORI was born in 1952 at Limoges and a graduate of l’Ecole Nationale des Beaux-arts. He devotes himself particularly on sculptures, specializing in representation of animals. He has pursued a career in painting and has generated a number of decorative projects.

As an heir to realism of the great wars he populated his studio with his ‘beasts’. He worked and carved directly on alabaster and marble giving his work the subtle translucence and a very rich color that characterized and resonates throughout his sculptures. Working with these materials also allowed him to develop his talent as a sculptor.

Jean-Marie FIORI adapts his own technique on different animals that he portrays; the smooth lines of the Oryx, ruggedness of Panda fur and the and the relief of the ram and bears.

Over the years he perfected his mastery on bronze and enriched his design pieces of fantastical beast and monumental installations. In 1997, he became the architect of the “Tour aux bêtes” at Majorque and in 1999 of the “Dolmen de Serris” for Marne la Valée. In 2000, he conceived a zodiac for la Monnaie de Paris.

It was at this time that he gained the admiration and friendship of the renowned decorator Alberto Pinto. He then developed a visual language closer to the decorative arts and thus expanded the work of Claude and François-Xavier Lalanne. He transformed the stag into chairs and the falcon into tables with a touch of humor and originality which is typical of his work.

For the immense variety of his shapes, the strength emitted by his sculptures and his delicate pigments which colored his works, he was awarded with the Edouard-Marcel Sandoz prize in 2009 and exhibition at Musée des Année 30 of Boulogne in 2012.

In 2010, Jean-Marie FIORI was selected by the Chinese Official Committee of the Universal Exhibition in Shanghai to create a set of urban furniture consisting of five benches. Inspired by the Chinese traditional culture, he reinterpreted the turtle, the bull, the tiger, the buffalo and the duck. This commission gives a new life in his art, giving him the opportunity for the first time to go from the nobility of bronze to the strength of lacquer ware. Emotions were renewed giving life to a series of four Ara heads in 2013.

In 2014, he pursued his monumental work with a “Arche aux oiseaux” in bronze as an astonishing architecture, followed by the series beginning with the “ Adam and Eve mural”, and composed an original poetic space where art and nature resounds harmoniously.