Art

Famous the world over for his masterful preservation of the naïf style, Michel Delacroix (born in Paris in 1933) has earned his reputation as one of the most beloved artists in the world 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 find inspiration to this day. 

The Paris Delacroix paints is not the urban metropolis of the present. It is the dream-like place the city became in 1940, 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 grasping "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. These 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 praise and numerous awards. 

In the U.S. alone, Delacroix's work has been featured in over 300 solo exhibitions, from New York City, Boston, and Washington, D.C., to Los Angeles, Carmel, Denver, Seattle, San Francisco -- and today, East Lansing! Abroad, his work has been exhibited in France, Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, England, and Japan. It forms part of the permanent collections of the Musee International d'Art Naïf and the Foundation Max Fournay in Paris, and of private collections around the globe. 

In 1994, Michel Delacroix was named an Official Artist of the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games and commissioned to celebrate the 1996 Games in an oil painting. Titled "Atlanta 1886-1996", Delacroix's stunning work was used to create an Official Poster for the 1996 Games and a special limited edition. In 1994, Delacroix was also honored by the U.S. Olympic Committee, which selected him to serve as an Official Artist and commissioned him to mark the one-hundredth anniversary of the modern Olympic Games in a painting titled "1896 Olympic". In 1995, Delacroix became the Official Artist of the 1995 Special Olympics World Games.