Jean Guvdérelian, best known by his pseudonym Guvder, was born in Lebanon in 1923 into a family of Armenian refugees. He studied at the French Jesuit school in 1946. After completing his studies at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, he spent four years in Italy (continued his studies in Rome), and returned to Beirut at the beginning of the nineteen-sixties to teach at the Italian Cultural institute (1957) . He quickly left this position to set up the Guvder Institute in 1963. A meeting place as much as a learning space, the Institute trained an entire generation of painters that would shine on the Lebanese and international art scenes, such as Cici Sursock, Assadour, Hrair and Krikor Norikian. The Institute closed its doors after ten intense years (1973). In 1978, Guvder spent one year in Paris. He then briefly taught sculpture at the American University of Beirut before being hired (1980) by the Académie Libanaise des Beaux-Arts (ALBA) instructing young artists. Today, his studio, where he demystifies the Masters and transmits his passion for drawing, still teems with art, ideas and talent. He won the Second Prize for Landscape Painting in an exhibition in Ravenna, Italy and in 1959, he was awarded an honorary degree at the 7th Concours Marina di Ravenna, Italy. He has been awarded the St. Mesrob Mashdots Medal.

Guvder is a prolific sculptor and an accomplished painter, but is best known for being a prodigious draftsman of eclectic influences. Inspired by the Baroque of French engraver Jacques Callot and the Flemish Jacob Jordaens, by the drawings of Rembrandt and Pablo Picasso, Guvder gives equal importance to each subject. In his still lives, one feels his deep interest in every facet of the most diverse objects, from kitchen utensils to archaeological finds. One also detects a fundamental involvement with mankind, from biblical scenes to contemporary crowds haunted by the memory of the Armenian Genocide.

Historically, drawings often served as part of the preparations for paintings. With Guvder however, drawing is an art by itself. He draws incessantly, seeking perfection, even in his practically instantaneous reproductions of everything that dares enter his field of vision. Although Guvder uses watercolor for its expansive touch, he prefers dipping his pen into India ink to give birth to a thousand dark drawings, in which his virtuoso line multiplies, intertwines and unfolds to become perspective, shadow and light.