Jules Michel

Who is Jules Michel?

Jules Michel 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.

He was an audacious and reckless youth, filled with enthusiasm and a healthy team spirit. He became the top champion speed roller skater in Paris at the age of fourteen. But he was also greatly impressed by the delicacy and extraordinarily precise work of his uncle, engraver Raymond Courcaut. As a result, Michel became a student of advertising, while starting to compete in cycling races and continuing to paint in secret. He received guidance from Georges Rouault and Pablo Picasso but developed his own unique style.

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