Festival de dessin

This event is much more than just an exhibition: it's a genuine exploration of the world of drawing in all its forms, from traditional techniques to the most contemporary approaches. Each edition transforms Arles into a place of bubbling creativity, where the public can discover new works, take part in workshops, and exchange ideas directly with the artists.

In 2025, the Festival du Dessin d'Arles promises to push back the frontiers of artistic expression by showcasing bold, innovative works. The rich and varied program includes exhibitions in emblematic venues across the city, live performances, as well as conferences and round tables inviting reflection on the role of drawing in contemporary art. By offering a space for discovery and sharing, the festival reinforces Arles' position as a mecca for visual culture, while inspiring the art lovers and creators of tomorrow. A not-to-be-missed event for all drawing and visual arts enthusiasts.

2025: Tribute to Jean-Michel Folon

Jean-Michel Folon was born in Brussels in 1934 and died in Monaco in 2005. At the age of twenty, he began studying industrial aesthetics at La Cambre, then moved into a gardener's cottage on the outskirts of Paris, determined to become a draughtsman. For a few years, he lived a meagre existence, finding few sponsors. That all changed one day when, like a bottle thrown into the sea, he mailed a few drawings to Esquire in New York, where he was immediately acclaimed. Other major American magazines - The New Yorker, Horizon, Fortune, Time - soon offered him cover pages and impressive print runs.

It was the start of a runaway success story, rarely seen among cartoonists. Galleries and museums the world over welcomed him with open arms: New York, Chicago, Milan, Venice, São Paulo, Buenos Aires, Barcelona, Tokyo. Drawings, engravings, paintings, sculptures - his art flourishes in diversity.

Also a film actor alongside Rufus, Michel Piccoli, Patrick Dewaere, Marthe Keller, Miou-Miou and Marlène Jobert, he pursued his brilliant artistic career illustrating major writers such as Kafka, H. G. Wells, Prévert, Vian, Borges and Bradbury, and creating monumental murals, stained-glass windows, tapestries and theater and opera sets. A master of the art of the brief, hard-hitting message, he has designed over five hundred posters, some of which have remained in the collective unconscious to this day. In 2000, he opened the Fondation Folon in La Hulpe, in the heart of a landscape symbolic of his childhood, to showcase most of his work.

For its third edition, the Festival du Dessin has chosen to pay tribute to this great name of the 20th century by bringing together some one hundred watercolors, posters and humoristic drawings.
The public will thus be able to discover the astonishing polyphony of this unclassifiable yet instantly recognizable, modest and delicate artist, who, in a few strokes, shows all the absurdity of war, the destruction of forests, the invasion of machines, the anonymous solitude of cities, but also the mysterious and sumptuous harmony of the world.