Famous French Abstract Painters

Jean Arp was born in Strasbourg, to a German father and a French mother. After studying art in Paris and Switzerland, he co-created The Modern Alliance and participated in the Dada and Abstraction-Création movements. An avant-garde painter and sculptor, he also experimented with media such as embroidery.

Nicolas de Stael was a Russian-born French painter best remembered for his highly abstract landscape painting. He traveled throughout Europe, living and working in places like Paris. Nicolas de Stael suffered from depression, insomnia, and exhaustion throughout his career. He committed suicide by jumping off from his studio terrace at the age of 41.

Pierre Soulages is a French painter, sculptor, and engraver. His works have influenced several prominent personalities like François Hollande, who called him the greatest living artist in the world, in 2014. Over the course of his illustrious career, Pierre Soulages has won several prestigious awards like Carnegie Prize, Rembrandt Award, and the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.

Hungarian-born French artist Simon Hantaï is remembered for his kaleidoscopic abstract paintings and pioneered the pliage technique of creating art with folded canvases. He studied art in Budapest and then moved to France. His best-known works include the Meuns series, Tabulas, and Laissées. He became mostly a recluse after the 1982 Venice Biennale.

French painter Gaston Duchamp, known by his pseudonym, Jacques Villon, is remembered for his Cubist and abstract paintings. Initially a law student, he quit law and switched to art soon. He worked making prints and posters for a decade. He later created masterpieces displaying his sense of colors and geometry.

French painter Jean Hélion began his artistic career as an abstract painter but later switched to figurative painting. An architect, he began painting in his spare time and soon co-founded an association of abstract painters, Abstraction-Création. He fought for the French army in World War II and also penned a memoir in captivity.

French abstract painter Olivier Debré was one of the leading painters of colour field style of abstract painting of the Post-War Era. A member of French Academy, Debré shifted from figurative painting to abstraction after visiting studio of Pablo Picasso. Debré is noted for working in large-scale stage-sets including for Comédie Française, new Shanghai Opera House and Hong Kong Opera.