Painter (Tunisia 1903 - Paris 1963)

Discover the people who stood behind and supported the work of Jules Lellouche

Adèle (Ajdla Ryjwa Rubin born in Lodz 1908 – died in Paris 1988)
Leaves Poland to escape anti-Semitism and the pogroms. She remains in Germany (Frankfurt) until 1933, when the arrival of Nazism forces her to flee again, this time to France.
In Paris, she attends the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière and meets Jules Lellouche, marrying him in 1935. With generosity and enthusiasm, together they share a love for art and Tunisian lighting, but also the difficulties of an artist's life.
After his husband's death, and until her death, she works tirelessly to keep the works and memory of Jules Lellouche alive. This website owes its realization to her patient and obstinate efforts.

Dr Georges Valensi (1908-1997)
Famous doctor (gynecologist) in Tunis and Paris, committed activist (one of the founders of the Tunisian Communist Party), and friend of Jules Lellouche, Dr. Valensi was also collector, critic (painting, literature), and himself a painter, with numerous paintings done at the space he rented with Lellouche by the Port of Tunis.

view text G. Valensi

Fernand Rouillon (1920-2000)
Diplomat and former Ambassador to France in Syria and Turkey. As Cultural Attaché to the French Residency in Tunisia, he meets Lellouche in 1947 and befriends the painter, whose work he admires and to which he devotes several studies.

view text F. Rouillon

Dr Paul Gay (1906-1968)
He had two callings in life: a literary one and an artistic one. Grand connoisseur and collector of paintings, coordinator of art galleries, he was responsible for the selection in Tunis then the Galerie Vendôme in Paris, long run by his son Ariel – (Lellouche exhibition in 1974). Mr. Brami also pens a lovely introduction to a booklet consecrated to Lellouche in 1988.

Simone Véliot
Painter, director, and organizer of the Salons de la Rose-Croix in Paris (1982-1989). She set up many painting and sculpture exhibitions, dedicated namely to the Ecole de Paris and two exhibitions to Jules Lellouche (1985, 1988).

Hamadi Cherif
Among the most informed of Tunisia's gallery owners (Fine Art Gallery in Sidi-Bou-Said). Founded the International Center of Art and Culture in Djerba Sidi Jmour, inaugurated in 2010 with the dashing exhibition "Paris-Tunis Painters in Movement." Many exhibitions dedicated to Jules Lellouche, to painters from the School of Tunis, and to young Tunisian artists he supported.

Among the numerous late friends of Jules Lellouche, we would like to invoke the memory of :
The architects Gaston Cohen-Solal, René Audineau, Bernard Zerhfuss; Marie Goyer-Autra, a painter and critic of rare finesse; Alexandre Fichet, cultural animator in Tunis and director of the Tunisian Salon; the lawyer André Valensi and his brother "Loulou"; the painters and sculptors Armand Lacroix, Achille Laurent, Josso, Amar Farhat, Moses and Nello Levy, Edagar Naccache, Kijno, and Boris Tazlitski; Jules Lellouche was a politically-engaged artist: with his labor-organizer and activist friends Maurice Nizard, Paul Sebag, Maurizio Valenzi, and Taieb Dabbab, he participated in and supported the struggle against colonialism and fascism for freedom, democracy, and peace.