Jean Jégoudez was a French artist born in Paris in 1915, inheriting a lineage of craftsmanship from his father and grandfather, whose stonemasonry firm designed the façade of the Claridge building on the Champs-Élysées. While working for the family business, he studied at the National School of Decorative Arts and collaborated with Art Deco graphic designer Jean Carlu.

During the Second World War, he was imprisoned by the Germans in Provins but managed to escape and return to Paris on foot. He formed close friendships with poets René Guy Cadou, Jean Bouhier and Luc Bérimont, and illustrated many of their poems.

His drawings often explored patterns involving nature, faces or eyes, and his style shifted substantially over time between figurative and abstract work. Art critic Jean-Françoise Chabrun ranked Jégoudez among the finest French painters of the 1950s, praising his ‘marvellous audacity.’ A regular exhibitor in Paris, he later settled in the South of France with his second wife. He died in Grasse in 2007 at the age of 91.