Daniel Venjean

For over sixty years, Daniel Venjean has been one of the leading French surrealist artists. Inspired by the Science Fiction literature of the 50’s, he exhibited his first paintings in 1958. Throughout the 60’s he was a member of a group of young surrealist artists and participated in numerous modern art exhibitions in Europe and Japan. In 1970, he was accepted at the prestigious Salon des Artistes Français where he exhibited with Salvador Dalí. He received the New York award at the Akademia Raymond Duncan in 1972. He also became a long-standing member of the avant-garde Salon des Indépendants. Daniel Venjean has been an honored guest at various Science Fiction and Aerospace conventions including the 1984

Aerospace Festival of Méribel, alongside astronaut Jim Irwin, the National French Convention of Angers in 1985, and Balticon in Baltimore, MD in 2011. In 1984, he met the British rock band Queen to work on an audiovisual Space-Opera project. He was commissioned in 1985 by the European Space Agency to create the concept artwork of the Hermes spaceplane.

Daniel Venjean studied and rediscovered the painting techniques of the Flemish masters of the 15th and 16th centuries. To this day, he still prepares his own pigments and oils to create his distinctive layering of glacis contributing to the eerie depth of his artwork. He is also an authority on the science of painting and has given seminars on symbolism and the Sacred Arts. An expert in decorative arts, the artist has also been commissioned worldwide for large painting projects including the Olympic Games of Albertville in 1992, the Kawakyu hotel in Shirahama, Japan in 1993, and the New York exhibition of decorative arts in 1994.

Venjean’s artwork can be found in many museums across the globe including the Air France Museum, the National Center of Space Studies, and the Air Museum of Angers-Marcé. He is the recipient of a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the French arts and culture. Daniel Venjean is also the author of many books including Le Cercle Universel (1984), The Art of Venjean (2009), Biomorphs (2011) and ZÖZ (2015).