André Quellier

André Quellier, born in Paris on 3 January 1925 and died on 16 March 2010, was a French painter, draughtsman and illustrator. He began painting at eleven and entered the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in 1941, training in classical painting under Jean Dupas and Edmond Heuzé. After the war he worked for several years with the choreographer Katherine Dunham as a set designer and illustrator, and illustrated books devoted to dance. Committed to figurative painting, from the 1950s he devoted a long series of works to the mime Marcel Marceau, exhibited notably in 1956, and painted many portraits of figures from the stage and cultural life, as well as a substantial body of religious work. Between 1991 and 1995 he created his great cycle on Jean de La Fontaine's Fables, shown in 1995 at the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle and published in 2002 with the Musée des fables et des contes de La Fontaine in Béziers. Based in Montmartre, he exhibited in France and abroad; several of his works are held by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.