Biography

Francois Morellet was born on April 30, 1926 in Cholet, Maine-et-Loire, France. He was an actor and art director, known for Plus Echo (1982), N.N. (1969) and Le grand escalator (1987). He was married to Danielle. He died on May 10, 2016 in Cholet, Maine-et-Loire, France.

French visual artist who often used neon lights in his installations. He was a friend of Ellsworth Kelly.

In 2110 he became the second living artist to create a permanent commission for the Musée du Louvre in Paris. He redesigned the bay windows and oculi of the museum's Lefuel staircase to let in more light.

He taught himself to paint as a teenager, studying art along with Russian, and working in the family business making toy model cars (which he continued to manage until 1975). After a brief period of semi-figurative painting and sculpture inspired by Oceanic art, he turned to abstraction in 1950, when he had his first solo exhibition in Paris.

In 1960, he co-founded the activist collective of kinetic and optical art Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel (Grav) with Julio Le Parc and others.

In 1963 my neon works were provocative, vulgar and unsaleable -- I had to wait 20 years to sell my first one. Today they are stylish, expensive and very trendy.