After studying at the École Normale Supérieure and the Beaux-Arts, Françoise Spiess taught theater at university, while continuing to write and paint.

She writes, mainly about theater, for Éditions Gallimard, and has recently turned her attention to video.

The artist regularly exhibits in France and abroad, particularly in Germany.

The works on offer, Le roi diverti se meurt, 1 et 2, are the first in a series devoted to Basquiat.

They denounce the society of spectacle that lost the painter, recall the violence of his death and the racism he never ceased to vilify, but also the joy that irrigates his canvases. The chosen title plays on two famous French literary texts: Le roi se meurt, play by Eugène Ionesco, and un roi sans divertissement, novel by Jean Giono, whose title is taken from a thought by Pascal.