Researching Jules Michel

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

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.