Jean-michel Folon Biography
Jean-Michel Folon (1934 - 2005) was a Belgian artist born in Uccle in 1934 and died in 2005 at the age of 71 in Monaco. He was a multidisciplinary artist, designer, painter, poster designer, sculptor, set designer, stained glass artist and director. Initially trained as an architect, he abandoned his studies at the École Saint-Luc in the mid-1960s and moved to Paris. He soon distinguished himself in the field of illustration. He worked on many materials and created in various forms: tapestries, paintings, stamps (in 1982, the French post office published two stamps illustrated by the artist), theater sets. He produced his first drawings in the 1960s, which propelled him to the forefront of the world art scene. In the United States, renowned magazines, such as Horizon, Esquire and The New Yorker, publish his drawings. In these he very soon creates a world of his own in which an anonymous character seems to float or slide in an undefined, sometimes absurd world. With the use of color, his work took on a more pictorial turn towards the end of the 1960s. In 1969 his first solo exhibition was organized in New York (Lefebre Gallery). In a short time his universe becomes essential: covers of French and American newspapers, posters, theme songs for television programmes. The public often identifies with this man lost in this concrete world, among these arrows with a thousand contradictory directions, a manipulated, alienated, anonymous man. In 1971, the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris organized a vast exhibition (90 works) of his production. Italy, the United States and Japan organize events about the artist. Folon will produce a large number of etchings, silkscreens, watercolors, book covers, illustrations, collages. He will be interested in animation, tapestry, theater sets, sculpture, he will create murals. Reproductions of his "images" or posters flourished on the walls of many French and foreign homes.
