Crié, Jean

France, 1967

Son of a mechanic and truck driver, Jean Crié has been drawing cars and other vehicles since childhood, a theme that has never left him. As a teenager, he attended evening classes with the desire to learn perceptive skills, and continue to express his passion for cars through drawing. In 1987 he entered the Centre d’Aide par le Travail where he stayed for almost 20 years before resigning and attending workshops at the Carlotti residence (a residential home for disabled adults in Halluin). It was there that he showed his drawings for the first time at the Differ’art Festival in 2011. Jean Crié’s works are like an automobile catalogue where vehicles from different eras follow one another, always represented in perspective and which occupy the central place of the composition. What is fascinating are the stories that accompany these “mechanics”, with characters in incredible situations, like a comic strip panel, where women with large breasts have a prominent place. His creative work is a mixture of all kinds of techniques, he draws, paints and does not hesitate to stick material on paper, leather, fur, feather, … to give life to his characters.