Éric Joisel was a French origami artist who specialized in the wet-folding method. He created figurative art sculptures using sheets of paper and water, without the use of any adhesive or scissors. Origami is derived from the Japanese words “ori” meaning “fold” and “kami” meaning paper. Origami is the Japanese art of forming sculptures out of paper only. And Eric Joisel took this to a whole new level.
His pieces are not regular origami models, but completely different interpretations of a very ancient art form. Joisel was born on 15 November 1956, in Montmorency, a commune in the northern suburbs of Paris, and focused his education on history and law before turning to art. Most of Eric’s models are three dimensional and lifelike in appearance. He could spend more than 100-hours folding a single piece of paper in order to create his amazing pieces of art.
Three Kings - from Lord of the Ring
His initial experiences in the art world were in sculpting, using the traditional forms of clay and stone. He first discovered in the 1980s the unique forms created with paper by Akira Yoshizawa, the Japanese grandmaster of origami who had created more than 50,000 models, developing the wet-folding method that allowed for the creation of three-dimensional rounded sculptures.
The Origami Rat
Joisel was taken by the way the Yoshizawa's works blended classical origami methods and standard forms of sculpture in order to make expressive figures out of wet paper, without making any cuts or using any glue. Joisel shifted to working with paper in the 1990s, devoting the remainder of his career to creating origami art using his own self-taught variation of the wet-folding techniques that Yoshizawa had developed and refined.
Joisel First Dwarf
He devoted his life to origami after losing his job as the manager of a printing company. Living in a small home, he devoted hours focusing on the meticulous design and detail of each piece of origami. Themed pieces that he handcrafted included figures from commedia dell'arte and foot-high sculptures of musicians each holding a finely detailed musical instrument.
Joisel published many of the design plans for his figures, providing a look into the extraordinary level of detail and precision that "renders his art simultaneously approachable and unattainable". Joisel was featured in the documentary Between the Folds, a 2009 film by Vanessa Gould about the modern world of origami artists.