Francois Morellet

(* 1926 in Cho­let, France) worked from 1948–75 in the fam­ily busi­ness but became grad­u­ally inter­ested in paint­ing dur­ing that time. He started out work­ing on his own, but then took occa­sional lessons from a painter. After an early fig­u­ra­tive phase, paint­ings with min­i­mal­ist, sys­tem­atic and geo­met­ric con-structions emerged in the fifties. In the six­ties Morel­let moved more and more towards exper­i­men­tal art and became a mem­ber of GRAV (Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel), a group of kinetic artists who wanted to sci­en­tif­i­cally explore the pos­si­bil­i­ties of visual art. Start­ing in 1963 Morel­let began to use neon light tubes in his works. He lives today in Cholet.