Stephane Blanquet

Contemporary Artist

Stéphane Blanquet is a French contemporary artist working across graphic art, painting, publishing, theater, and film.

Emerging in the late 1980s, he first gained recognition through independent fanzines, notably Chacal Puant (1990) and La Monstrueuse, which received the Alph’Art du Fanzine prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 1996.

He is widely regarded as a pioneering figure at the intersection of graphic novels, contemporary art, and illustration.

Blanquet’s multidisciplinary practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, tapestry, photography, animation, scenography, urban art, and publishing.

In 2007, he founded United Dead Artists, an independent publishing house that has produced over 150 titles featuring more than 350 international artists.

His long-standing collaboration with theater director Jean Lambert-wild began in 2005, with productions presented at major venues including the Festival d’Avignon and internationally across Asia. He has served as Ocular Director at the Comédie de Caen and as art director at the Théâtre de l’Union in Limoges.

His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions and museums including the Centre Pompidou (Paris), MAC Lyon, Singapore Art Museum, Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Hayward Gallery (London), Halle Saint-Pierre (Paris), and others across Europe and Asia.

His works are held in major public and private collections, including the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Columbia University, and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques.

Often described as an artist of metamorphosis, Blanquet’s visual universe draws distant echoes from figures such as Hieronymus Bosch, Robert Crumb, and Roland Topor while remaining singular in voice.

His painting practice is especially distinctive: working without preparatory sketches, he constructs complex monumental compositions entirely from mental architecture.

Each canvas unfolds sequentially, executed with one hand, resulting in images that carry a sense of inevitability and psychological intensity.