Janebé
Born in 1907.
Died in 2000.
Janebé is the artistic name of Jeanne Pellet, who later became Jeanne Barraud and then Jeanne Weber (Praz, 1907 – Neuchâtel, 2000), a painter from Neuchâtel. She was introduced to art by attending, from adolescence onwards, the studios of Léon Perrin, William Stauffer and Georges Dessoulavy in La Chaux-de-Fonds. She posed for these artists while observing their work; she did not undertake a course of study at an art school.
At the end of the 1930s, she turned to painting and adopted the pseudonym Janebé. She received a Federal Fine Arts grant in 1939 and 1940.
Her first studios, dark and far from comfortable, fostered her interest in chiaroscuro. She also stayed in Algeria and Tunisia. Her painting remained figurative; portraits and female figures occupy a central place in it, alongside landscapes and still lifes.
From 1951 onwards, she lived with Albert Weber, who supported her artistic activity, and exhibited regularly. From 1954, she presided over the Neuchâtel section of the Swiss Society of Women Painters and Sculptors, and in 1956 she served on the jury of the National Fine Arts Exhibition in Basel. She continued painting until 1995.
The Fondation Ateliers d’Artiste now preserves her studio holdings and archives, acquired through a donation, which support the study of her work.
