Jean Miotte was born in Paris in 1926. He is one of the “informal” artists of the first hour. Jean Miotte is a contemporary French painter in relation with lyrical abstraction whose singularity is affirmed by his taste for gestures and calligraphic form. After studying mathematics, he decided to devote himself to painting.

In 1945, he produced his first paintings based on nature and imaginative compositions. In 1947, he starts to attend the workshops of Montparnasse; the workshops of Othon Friesz, Ossip Zadkine. In 1950, at the age of 24, he painted his first abstract canvas. It was the beginning of a long pictorial adventure that led him to set up a studio not only in Paris, but also in New York and Hamburg.

He exhibited at the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles in 1953 for the first time and then participated annually. In 1957, lyrical spontaneity and gushing writing take precedence over his formal research. Everything becomes movement in a monochrome painting where the sign and the writing bring a touch of symbolism. In 1959, he returned to polychromes without losing sight of the dynamic he had acquired.

In 1962, his work tends towards a more descriptive graphic design where contrasts are accentuated, and space is enlarged. In 1975, he returned to a great sobriety of color, white rhythmed by colors dominating the canvas. In 1976, he works with gouache, kraft collage and new printing processes. He then develops and unravels a set of researches.

In 2002, the Jean Miotte Foundation opened in New York, with a permanent collection of his works including paintings, drawings, sculptures, etchings and lithographs.

Jean Miotte died in 2016.