François Morellet (30 April 1926 in Cholet - 11 May 2016) was a French artist. He was active in various art forms throughout his career, including painting, light art, sculpture and graphic arts.
Morellet started his artistic career while still working in his parents' business, as a painter. From 1948 he taught himself to paint and a few years later he was apprenticed to a professional painter.
His work was influenced by artists such as Piet Mondrian and the painter Pierre Dmitrienko (Nouvelle École de Paris). He called himself an abstract painter as early as 1950 and had his first exhibition at Galerie Creuze in Paris around that time. His first sphère trame dates from that period.
In the sixties he started experimenting with kinetic art together with artists such as Francisco Sobrino, Horacio Garcia Rossi, Julio Le Parc, Yvaral and Joël Stein, within the group of artists Groupe de Recherche d'Art Visuel. This group wanted to scientifically investigate the possibilities of visual art experimentally. He also participated in the international movement Nouvelle Tendance.
In 1963, Morellet started making light objects using neon tubes, inspired by the American Dan Flavin. From the late 1960s, Morellet began to focus on art in relation to architecture and art in public space. Examples of these projects are the Center Culturel in Compiègne, the La Défense district in Paris and contributions to the sculpture park of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo.
Morellet's work is classified as geometric abstraction and fits well with the minimalism of Donald Judd, Ellsworth Kelly, Sol LeWitt and Frank Stella. At the same time, it shows kinship with Dadaism.
A typical example of his work is NoEndNeon in the Zentrum für Internationale Lichtkunst in Unna, where he made this installation especially for an underground space of the light art museum.
