The exemplary journey of Jean Rustin, born in Montigny-les-Metz, in Moselle, is that of a demanding, courageous, uncompromising artist who has taken all the risks, even that of displeasing, to remain faithful to his vocation.
Carried by the current of lyrical abstraction, Jean Rustin had first proposed, in the first years of his career, a very seductive painting, too, to his taste, since on the occasion of a great retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art of the City of Paris, he came to judge his paintings «too beautiful».
For him, it was an opportunity for a real conversion and a return to figuration. He would then commit himself definitively to a tireless, cruel, lucid, torn and tearing exploration of the human body, in consequence of the human person and of his mystery.
Jean Rustin’s painting often became an object of scandal. He had made the bet of realism, harder, more secret and, perhaps, more moving.