Jean Max Friedrich WELZ (1900 – 1975)

BIOGRAPHY

Born in Salzburg, Austria into a family of gilders and picture framers, Jean Welz was a leading South African painter and a prominent architect.

He studied art and architecture, and, in 1925, at the time of the Paris Exhibition, he travelled to Paris. There he worked with prominent modern architects, like Robert Mallet-Stevens, Adolf Loos and Raymond Fischer, producing a handful of villas, including Tzara House (1926) and Maison Dubin (1928), which was next door to Le Corbusier’s Villa Cook (1926). It was during this period that he adopted the name Jean.

In 1937, Welz emigrated to South Africa with his wife, the Danish journalist, Inger Christensen, and their young son, and began work as an architect at the University of the Witwatersrand, where he designed the entrance foyer of the Great Hall and the Institute for Geophysical Research.

In 1939, he became ill with tuberculosis and moved with his family to Barrydale in the Little Karoo, where he and his family operated a tea-room.

In 1941, Welz became principal of the Hugo Naudé Art Centre in Worcester in the Western Cape, where he remained for 28 years. He held his first exhibitions in Stellenbosch and in Cape Town in 1942, and the same year became a member of the New Group of South African artists.

Welz was a successful and influential artist, exhibiting widely from 1942 until his last major exhibition in 1970. His health deteriorated after he became ill again in 1968 and he died in 1975.

In 1947, he was awarded the Silver Medal of the South African Academy for Arts and Science for his picture Earthenware and cupboard door. In 1969, the South African Academy for Arts and Science awarded him the Medal of Honour for painting.

One of his sons, Martin Welz, is a well-known South African investigative journalist. Another, Stephan Welz, was an art dealer.

SOURCE
‘Jean Welz,’ Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Welz.