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Jules Michel (born 10 April 1931) is a French artist.
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Jules Michel (born 10 April 1931) is a French artist.
As a child of eight, while exploring the family attic, Jules Michel discovered an old oil-paint box. With it, he quickly improvised his first paintings.
At fourteen, he became the top champion speed roller skater in Paris. He showed interest in the craftsmanship of his uncle, engraver Raymond Courcaut. This dual influence lead Michel to study advertising, while he also took up competitive cycling and continued to paint in private. Though he received guidance from Georges Rouault and Pablo Picasso, he ultimately forged a distinctive style of his own.
It was just after World War II, during the Saint-Germain-des-Prés period, that Michel met thinkers as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Boris Vian against a backdrop of music by the still unknown Juliette Gréco, and Sidney Bechet and Claude Luter on their way to fame as jazzmen.
Embracing a career in advertising, Michel moved up the agency ladder quickly and steadily, but never forgot his first love. In 1945 he learnt photogravure, lithography, silkscreen printing and engraving
Michel continued painting and sculpting but was too individualistic and too full of energy to follow a long academic course. Instead, he roamed the Louvre, learned from his artist friends and periodically attended a variety of art schools including, from 1948 to 1951, Ecole des Arts Appliqués et des Arts Décoratifs, Les Beaux Arts and La Grande Chaumière, where he was temporarily interested in Cubism. In 1951 he performed his military service.
In 1973 he established his first studio in Paris. Between 1974 and 1980 he lived in Australia, then moved to Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Art collectors who have works by Jules Michel include