Jacques Daniel was born in France, 1920–2011. He was a French painter, graphic designer, illustrator, and artistic director whose practice moved between post-war painting, publishing design, and visual communication. Born in Les Andelys, Normandy, in 1920, he studied at the École des Arts Appliqués in Paris, the École Estienne, and later at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Montparnasse, where he continued drawing throughout his life.

In the late 1930s, Daniel was encouraged by the influential collector and critic Wilhelm Uhde, known for supporting artists such as Séraphine de Senlis and Henri Rousseau. Uhde acquired Daniel’s paintings and introduced him to a circle connected to early modern and post-war abstraction. During the Second World War, Jacques Daniel participated in the French Resistance in Paris. Working as a professional layout designer and printer, he was involved in the production of resistance material during the Paris uprising of August 1944. His artistic recognition accelerated in 1949 when he participated in the exhibition Hommage à Wilhelm Uhde at Galerie Denise René in Paris alongside Georges Braque, Pablo Picasso, Séraphine de Senlis, Camille Bombois, Jean Deyrolle, and other major figures of twentieth-century French art.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Daniel developed a distinctive painterly language balancing stillness, structure, abstraction, and object-based contemplation. Critics including Charles Estienne, Jean Bouret, Pierre Descargues, and Georges Boudaille wrote about his work in publications such as Arts, Combat, Les Lettres Françaises, and Le Monde.

Alongside painting, Jacques Daniel became an important figure in French graphic design and publishing. He worked as artistic director of the magazine Constellation between 1951 and 1956, collaborating with writers and artists including Boris Vian, Simenon, Maurice Druon, Chaval, and Yves Gibaud. He later joined the Club Français du Livre, where he became known as one of the notable French layout designers of the post-war decades. In 1966, Jacques Daniel created the now-famous Carrefour logo for the French retail group, a design still used today in modified form. He also developed visual identities, editorial concepts, and graphic systems for publishers, magazines, and international projects throughout the following decades.

His works entered several public collections, including: Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museum of Hamburg, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Verviers and Musée de Saint-Omer. Jacques Daniel exhibited extensively in France and internationally, with solo exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Cannes, Naples, Prague, Saint-Omer, and Montpellier, as well as participation in UNESCO exhibitions, Galerie Denise René, Institut du Monde Arabe, Galerie Craven, and numerous artist salons and museum projects.

In his later years, Daniel settled in the Cévennes in southern France, where he continued painting daily in his studio. His work from the final decades of his life became increasingly contemplative, focusing on materiality, silence, drapery, architecture, and restrained monochromatic compositions that resonate strongly with contemporary collectible interiors and post-war European abstraction.