Jean Lambert-Rucki (1888-1967) was a Polish-French avant-garde artist, sculptor, and graphic designer whose distinctive fusion of Cubism, African tribal art, and modern religious imagery placed him among the important sculptural voices of the École de Paris. Born in Kraków, Poland, in 1888, he received his early training at the Academy of Fine Arts in his native city before moving to Paris in 1911, where he continued his studies at the École des Beaux-Arts. In Paris he became closely associated with the vibrant international community of artists around the dealer Léopold Zborowski, which included Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Moïse Kisling, placing him at the very heart of the interwar Parisian avant-garde.

Beginning in 1930 Lambert-Rucki became one of the pioneers of modern religious art, producing an extended body of sculptures for Catholic churches across France that transformed traditional religious subjects through the visual vocabulary of the modern era. Over the course of his career Lambert-Rucki worked in a number of different styles including Cubism, the tribal arts of Africa, and Primitivism, and his work brings these influences together with striking originality. His figures characteristically feature elongated proportions, mask-like faces, and stylized volumes drawn from his deep engagement with African sculpture, all inflected with the geometric structure of Cubism and the elegant refinement of Art Deco.

Lambert-Rucki collaborated extensively with the celebrated lacquer master Jean Dunand on some of the most important Art Deco decorative works of the interwar period, and his own sculptures in bronze, wood, plaster, and mixed media were widely exhibited at the Salon d'Automne and other major Parisian venues. His work was somewhat overshadowed in the postwar decades but has undergone significant reassessment in recent years. His sculptures are held in French museums and in significant international collections, where they are appreciated as distinctive contributions to the modernist sculptural tradition of the early twentieth century.