Le Monde de Folon

Whether through his posters, his illustrations, his television animations or his many exhibitions, Jean-Michel Folon (1934-2005) marked the collective imagination of the last third of the 20th century worldwide. A humanist, he leaves a figurative and poetic work, anchored in traditional techniques and, therefore, atypical in an artistic panorama dominated by conceptual art. His initially very dark universe evolves, alongside his campaigns for human rights or environmental awareness, towards an appeasement from the 1980s. In 2000, he created the Fondation Folon in the Solvay Regional Estate in La Hulpe to serve as a museum for his work.

Like Claude-Nicolas Ledoux who builds architecture to “awaken the senses”, Jean-Michel Folon initiates a broad artistic language, overflowing with a tireless curiosity for very different graphic universes denouncing the evils of contemporary society. The exhibition at the Royal Saltworks will present more than two hundred works from the Fondation Folon and will retrace more than fifty years of artistic quest.