Jean-Michel Folon

Biography of Jean-Michel Folon

Jean-Michel Folon, born March 1, 1934 in Uccle, Belgium and died October 20, 2005 in Monaco, is a Belgian watercolorist, painter, engraver and sculptor. He worked on many materials and created in various forms: watercolor, painting, engraving, sculpture, tapestry, postage stamps, theater sets.
During the academic year 1954-1955, he attended the industrial aesthetics courses at the National School of Visual Arts in La Cambre for a few months. Gifted in sketching but having failed his end-of-year exams, he was encouraged by his teachers and his uncle Étienne Samson to leave Brussels for Paris in 1955. He then moved into a gardener's lodge in Bougival.
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Jean-Michel Folon stands out in the field of illustration with styles characterized by broad watercolor gradients and the recurring use of characters with deliberately schematic outlines. His works reflect the questions of Western society after May 68, with characters wandering in bare landscapes or oppressive urban spaces. Occasionally an actor, he played roles in films such as *La Chute d'un corps* and *L'Amour nu*. In 1983, he designed the first Apple logo, "Mr. Macintosh", but did not benefit financially from this creation. In 1989, he achieved philatelic success with the logo of the international philatelic exhibition in Paris Philexfrance 89 and the logo Les Oiseaux for the commemoration of the French Revolution. Jean-Michel Folon was also a human rights defender, illustrating the articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1989 and participating in various campaigns for Amnesty International. He married successively Colette Portal and Paola Ghiringhelli and died on October 20, 2005 in Monaco, from leukemia.
The Folon Foundation, created on 28 October 2000 by the artist, is located in the park of the Solvay estate in La Hulpe. It presents more than three hundred works by Folon in a space designed by the architect Jean-Pierre Cluysenaar. In 2015, the Foundation created "L'atelier Folon" in Monaco to promote the artist's work. On the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Foundation, the Belgian Post Office issued a booklet of ten "Folon" postage stamps on 16 October 2010.