Jacques Monory
(Paris, 1924 – 2018)
Jacques Monory studied at the School of Applied Arts for Industry in Paris from 1939 to 1944.

Jacques Monory is one of the leading representatives of the Narrative Figuration movement. In 1968, he began the Meurtres (Murders) series, canvases often cut into several parts like film sequences. He works from sketches and photographs that he takes himself or selects from magazines or newspapers, images from television screens or cinema. His figures are bathed in a unified background, saturated with a dominant colour, usually blue. In some paintings, he depicts himself and/or reveals the people around him, as in a diary. In other fictions, known as ‘thriller scenarios', he takes a critical look at society, showing its dark side, disasters, wars, news items, death and violence. His vision is also expressed in films (Ex, 1968; Brighton Belle, 1974), ‘photo novels' and detective novels (Deux, 1973; Diamond Back, 1982; Angèle, 2005). The FHEL dedicated a major retrospective to him in 2015.

Jacques Monory said: ‘All my works are pieces of film noir more or less steeped in monochrome blue and, for a time, in fundamental Technicolor.'