Michel Delacroix, 1933 | Paris painting in Naïf Style

French painter* Michel Delacroix is an acclaimed master of the Naïf tradition and one of the most popular and successful artists in the world today.

Artist Michel Delacroix studied at the Lycee Louis-le-Grand.

Delacroix was educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and spent years experimenting with several different painting styles until, at the age of 35, he began producing works in the Naïf tradition, his characteristic style.

Michel Delacroix was born in 1933 on the Left Bank, in the 14th Arrondissement of Paris. He started painting at the early age of seven just as the German Occupation of Paris began. Paris as it was during the Occupation is the Paris that appears in his paintings even today; there was a virtual absence of automobiles and streetlights, the city was quiet and isolated.

His city-scapes display a simpler Paris of the past, of his boyhood rather than the urban metropolis of today.

A self-styled "painter of dreams and of the poetic past", Delacroix has devoted five decades to painting a city he calls "the Paris of then", the magical place where he was born, where he spent his boyhood, and where he continues to live to this day.

But the Paris Delacroix paints is not the urban metropolis of the present.

It is the dream-like place the city became in the 1940's, during the Occupation, when "we suddenly jumped fifty years into the past. No more cars in the streets, very few lights. Paris suddenly became very quiet, very dark, and, though people were afraid, there was a brotherhood and spirit that was very delightful".

For Delacroix, who was then a child of seven and spared by his age from understanding "the cruelties and absurdities" of war, it was "the one great adventure of my life".

And it is to this special Paris - the Paris of by-gone years and innocent splendors - that Delacroix has returned to over and over again in his gentle works. Theses works, renowned for their graceful balance of "the earthy and the urban, the cosmic and the ordinary", have captivated private collectors, museums and ordinary people alike throughout the world, earning the artist both universal acclaim and numerous awards*.

In the U.S. alone, Delacroix's work has been featured in over 300 one person shows, from New York City, Boston, and Washington D.C., to Los Angeles, Carmel, Denver, Seattle and San Francisco.

Abroad, his work has been exhibited in France, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, England, Japan, and forms part of the permanent collections of the Musee International d'Art Naïf and the Foundation Max Fourny in Paris, and of private collections around the globe.

In 1994, Michel Delacroix was named an Official Artist of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games by the U.S. Olympic Committee and commissioned to paint a work marking the hundredth anniversary of the modern Olympic Games.

The work, entitled 1896 Olympics, was used to create an Official Poster for the 1996 Games and a special Limited Edition.

In 1995, Delacroix also became an Official Artist of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) which commissioned him to celebrate the site of the 1996 Games in a work entitled Atlanta 1896-1996.

Delighted with the work, ACOG selected it to serve as a 1996 Olympic Games' Official Poster and a Limited Edition.

Following Atlanta 1896-1996, ACOG again honored Delacroix by commissioning him to create the Commemorative Painting and Cover Art of the Official Five CD Music Box Set of the 1996 Olympic Games.

Throughout the course of his career, Delacroix has been honored with numerous awards* including: 

• the Grand Prix des Amateurs d’Art, Paris (1973), 
• the Grand Prix de la Cote d’Azur, Cannes (1976) 
• the Premier Prix de Sept Collines, Rome (1976). 

He continues to exhibit abroad in Europe and Japan. 

In his early eighties, Delacroix is still producing new, original paintings for his solo exhibitions worldwide.

Michel Delacroix, nato a Parigi il 26 febbraio 1933, è un pittore Francese*, appartenente alla corrente naïf.

Ha iniziato a dipingere all'età di sette anni, in una Parigi sotto l'occupazione tedesca. Delacroix fu educato presso l'Ecole des Beaux-Arts di Parigi ed ha trascorso anni a sperimentare con diversi stili pittorici diversi fino a quando, all'età di 35 anni, iniziò a produrre opere nella tradizione Naïf, il suo stile caratteristico.

I suoi paesaggi urbani mostrano una Parigi più semplice, quella del passato, della sua infanzia, piuttosto che le metropoli urbane di oggi.