Many of you who have walked around Jávea on my Historical Jávea Walk will have passed a palace called Casa Lambert, preserved by the family of the French-Swiss painter André Lambert as an art school and exhibition space for community artists.
Who was Lambert, and why was he so involved in the cultural life of Jávea?
* Report by Karla Ingleton Darocas, Hons. B.A. (KarlaDarocas.com)
André Lambert Jordán (1884-1967) was a watercolourist, painter, engraver and Swiss-French architect who spent much of his life in Javea. For Lambert, Jávea was a gold mine of interest and he created many works of art about the place, from historic buildings to the unique landscape.
André Lambert was born on 17 March 1884 in Switzerland, where he studied architecture at the Technische Hochschule in Munich. He later studied fine arts in the Bavarian capital, and these studies took him to Paris around 1908.
André set up his first studio in Montparnasse and later moved to the Ile St. Louis.
In the French capital, he surrounded himself with a select group of intellectuals, poets and artists.
He was inclined towards graphic work and began illustrating books around 1912. He also collaborated with the magazine Simplicissimus, a weekly satirical magazine in German founded by Albert Langen in April 1896 and published until 1967.
in 1919, he founded the Latin magazine Janus in Paris in collaboration with Georges Aubault and collaborated on the magazine Vita Latina, published in Avignon.
In 1912 he travelled to Spain for the first time, where he discovered and studied Gypsy types and customs.
After marrying his wife Raquel, he settled in the "Cala Blanca" area of Jávea, where his house still stands today. André populated his land and the surrounding area with white pine trees and converted a ruin into a villa that followed the architectural typology of the region. The neighbours began to call the area "Cala del Francés" because of this transformation.
Lambert made many watercolours and engravings of the town centre and the rural surroundings around Jávea. The artist always felt very connected to Jávea, both artistically and emotionally.
André Lambert died in Paris on 24 November 1967. His mortal remains were cremated and transferred to Jávea, where they were buried under the pine trees in the "Cala Blanca".
Lambert's paintings and engravings are characterised by their refined modernist style, in which certain symbolist influences play a major role, especially in the line of Greco-Roman classicism, which was popular among the bourgeoisie of the time.
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Explore and Learn About the History of JÁVEA by visiting its exceptional architecture and monuments
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Resource Books written by
Karla Ingleton Darocas
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SpainLifestyle.com
Resource Books written by
Karla Ingleton Darocas
and published by
SpainLifestyle.com
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