Background
Jerome Mesnager was born on January 29, 1961 in Colmar, Alsace, France. His father was an engineer.
Jérôme Mesnager
Jerome Mesnager was born on January 29, 1961 in Colmar, Alsace, France. His father was an engineer.
Jerome Mesnager joined the Ecole Boulle, a school of fine arts and crafts, named after André-Charles Boulle, in 1974, where he followed the cabinetmaking course. In 1979, he joined Yves Got's and Georges Pichard's comics course. The two were professors at the Duperre School of Applied Arts.
In 1982, Jerome Mesnager co-founded "Zig-Zag", a group of very young artists who decided to take over the streets by drawing graffiti and to occupy abandoned factories through artistic performances.
On January 16, 1983, Mesnager invented the man in white, a symbol of light, strength and peace. He drew this white silhouette in the entire world: from the walls of Paris to the Chinese Wall.
In 1990, Mesnager left his parent's house and moved to Paris. He showed works drawn on wooden fences at the Loft gallery, and published a catalog of these works. In 1995, he produced a large mural painting in the Menilmontant street in Paris, "C'est nous les gars de Ménilmontant".
In 2006, he produced a series of paintings inspired by art nouveau and art deco.
Currently, Jerome Mesnager lives in Paris, France.
Jerome Mesnager is best known as one of the first Parisian street graffiti painters and the creator of the White Man. One of his most interesting project is the great mural done in 1995, in the Ménilmontant Street in Paris and titled "C’est nous les gars de Ménilmontant".
Currently, Mesnager is represented by Galerie Brugier-Rigai from Paris.
Quotations: "I said to myself: I will be free of any commercial circuit, in the street we can make art for the people of our time, for the passers-by as for the tramps!"
In 1982, he became one of the founding members of Zig-Zag, a group of ten very young artists who decided to take over the streets by drawing graffiti and to occupy abandoned factories through artistic performances.
