François Rouan (born in 1943 in Montpellier) is a major figure in contemporary French art. A painter, photographer and filmmaker, he has developed since the 1960s a highly distinctive body of work centered on the deconstruction of painting and the exploration of surface, memory and image. Closely associated with the Supports/Surfaces movement—though never officially a member—he took part in the radical rethinking of painting carried out by his generation.
Beginning in 1965, Rouan developed his signature technique of “braiding” (tressage), cutting and interweaving painted papers or canvas strips to create fragmented and vibrating pictorial surfaces. Drawing inspiration from both the cut-outs of Henri Matisse and Cubist investigations into pictorial structure, this process became central to his artistic language. Through layering, intersections and transparency effects, he constructs complex visual spaces in which signs, figures and memories emerge simultaneously.
From 1971 to 1973, Rouan was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome, where he formed an important relationship with Balthus, then director of the institution, who admired his technical mastery. His work also attracted the attention of Jacques Lacan, who collected several of his paintings and contributed a text to one of his exhibition catalogues.
From the 1980s onward, Rouan gradually reintroduced figuration into his compositions while expanding his practice to photography, film and video. His later works combine painting, photographic traces and moving images in layered compositions shaped by memory, motion and visual transformation. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Centre Pompidou in 1983. He also created stained-glass windows for the Cathédrale Saint-Cyr-et-Sainte-Julitte de Nevers.
Today, François Rouan continues to produce a prolific and experimental body of work in which painting, photography and video intersect through an ongoing reflection on fragmentation, time and perception. He lives and works in Laversines, France.