Jean Dupas, L'Archer, 1917, ADAGP Paris, 2025. Photo : L. Gauthier, mairie de Bordeaux

Jean Dupas & Co

The great Art Déco

Exposition
Tout public
26 june - 29 november 2026

Galerie des Beaux-Arts

The museum puts on the first retrospective of Jean Dupas's artwork (1882-1964). This exhibition will highlight the unique world of the artist, whose reputation spread from France to the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

Jean Dupas, a major figure in Art Deco

Jean Dupas (1882-1964) was a painter, drawer, and poster artist, and one of the major figures in the Art Deco movement. His peculiar and timeless world, populated by slender female figures, graced the pavilions of major exhibitions, collectors’ interiors, transatlantic ocean liner salons, and official buildings. 

Dupas left a mark on his era with his highly personal style, combining Mannerist influences as well as Cubist innovations, and by producing easily recognisable images, from large public decors to advertising icons in fashion magazines. Following in the tradition of Renaissance workshops, Dupas saw large-scale decors as the ultimate goal of his artistic project: “The bigger my work, the happier I am”.  

Curators :

Sophie Barthélémy, general curator
Margaux Wymbs, curator of the 19th and 20th-century collections
Louis Deltour, associate curator

Price :

Museum admission

An exhibition dedicated to the golden age of Art Deco

Jean Dupas & Co. The Great Art Deco will shed light on the emergence of Art Deco in Bordeaux and explore the art of Dupas up to the 1940s, focusing on the apotheosis of the 1920s and 1930s, illustrated by the International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts and the decorative programmes of transatlantic liners.

The exhibition aims to bring together a wide range of techniques in order to reflect the multidisciplinary ambition of the Art Deco movement and illustrate the fruitful dialogue between Dupas and his circle across different media. Dupas’s pictorial and graphic works will thus be presented alongside sculptures, ceramics, drawings, lacquer and glass panels, as well as posters and advertising magazines.

It will also pay particular attention to integrating the artist into his circle in Bordeaux, as well as those in Paris and Rome, and to recreating the dynamic artistic exchanges of the period to which he contributed greatly, both in France and abroad.

Beyond its original approach, this exhibition resonates with the national celebrations around the centenary of the 1925 International Exhibition of Decorative and Industrial Arts. Exhibition which brought Jean Dupas to prominence.

Exhibition design and educational program

Throughout the exhibition, visitors encounter a display structured around the key moments of Dupas’s career, enabling them to engage sensorially with his decorative vocation and artistic environment. Integrated interpretative features are woven throughout the route, thanks to playful and participatory devices. 

A rich cultural programme accompanies the exhibition, conceived as a « little Bordeaux Art Deco season » - architecture, heritage, literature, fashion, poetry, music, cinema and oenology - offering further opportunities to deepen understanding of the works.

Exhibition Catalogue and International Symposium

  • Exhibition catalogue, Éditions Sans Egal, 35 €, published on 25 June 2026
  • Exhibition album, Éditions Sans Egal, 9 €, published on 25 June 2026

The exhibition will also be accompanied by a symposium organised in partnership with the University of Bordeaux Montaigne and the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici.