Marc J.M. Monnier was born on July 18, 1947, in Rabat. Repatriated in 1956, his family lived in northern France before settling permanently in the Périgord Noir region.
A graduate of the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris in 1967, he initially intended to pursue a career in architecture but never practiced it. A stunt performer in Périgord and a member of Gil Delamare’s stunt team for French cinema, he was persuaded by Delamare’s accidental death in 1966 to devote himself entirely to art.
With the exception of works focused on Périgord, each of Marc Monnier’s collections involved one or several journeys. Primarily a watercolor and oil painter, he adopted a flexible methodology: although he often set up an easel (even in military theaters of operation in Kuwait) and had live subjects pose for extended sittings, he also reworked his production extensively using his photographic shots. Some paintings are patchworks, with men and women from Dordogne sometimes posing as extras to complete background scenes originally captured on the other side of the world.
He also worked in art sculpture, both figurative and abstract. He was one of the founders of L’Art Nôtre, an art gallery in Périgueux.
Throughout his professional life, Marc Monnier consistently used this name. Later in life, he chose to lengthen his virtual signature to Marc Jean-Marie Monnier, simply by reinstating his middle names, in an effort to distinguish himself on social media and in search engines from deceased and living namesakes.
Marc J.M. Monnier passed away in Périgueux on April 2, 2023, in his seventy-sixth year.
Nearly all of the original works may be considered lost, as no list of owners has been recovered. A majority of the originals are also unknown through reprography or even basic photography, since a catalogue raisonné was established only at a late stage. One of the long-term aims of this project is therefore to contribute to expanding and densifying that catalogue.
COLLECTIONS
Dordogne – 1964 / 2023
Seascapes – 1964 / 2023
Sculpture – 1970s to 2001
Nepal – 1985, 1986, 1988
India – 1986, 1988
Thailand – 1988
Portugal – 1989
Morocco – 1989, 2009
Kuwait – 1991
Although he did not succeed in being appointed as an official illustrator by the French Army, he nevertheless reached Kuwait during the final military operations. There, he painted the fires of Kuwaiti oil wells set ablaze by the Iraqi army, in temperatures exceeding fifty degrees Celsius and under a rain of hot hydrocarbons. On that occasion, he appeared in a double-page feature in Newlook France (January 1992) and was photographed by photojournalist Chip Hires.
Marquesas Islands – 1993
Tahiti – 1997
Cuba – 2001
Burkina Faso – 2002, 2003
Senegal – 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008
During his travels, he painted a wrestler later identified by some Senegalese as the wrestler Ness, although this has not been formally established.
Abstract Painting – 2002 / 2023
Madagascar – 2011, 2018
MAIN EXHIBITIONS AND NOTABLE EVENTS
First Prize for Painting, Salon des Beaux-Arts of Dordogne, 1986
Acquisition of three paintings by the City of Périgueux, 1986
Exhibition at L’Art Nôtre Gallery, Périgueux, 1992
Exhibition at the French Embassy in Kuwait, March 1992
Exhibition at the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord (MAAP), “Travels and Creation,” April 2 – May 31, 1993
Inauguration of the monumental sculpture in tribute to François Augiérac at the Pierre Fanlac Media Library, Périgueux, January 13, 2001
Creation of a painting for auction during a gala at the Prefecture, March 31, 2006
Historiographical contextualization at the National Library of Kuwait in collaboration with CEFREPA, “France and Kuwait: A Friendship of More Than Two Centuries,” May 29 – June 16, 2022
Group exhibition at the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord (MAAP), “One Thousand and One Orient,” June 15–18, 2023
Group exhibition at the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord (MAAP), “The Orient of Painters in the Collections,” June 15 – December 10, 2023
Acquisition of a bust of Henry Miller by the Museum of Art and Archaeology of Périgord (MAAP)
Marc J.M. Monnier 