André François, sculptor, printmaker, painter, cartoonist, and illustrator, was born Andre Farkas in Temesvar, Austria-Hungary (now Timisoara, Romania) on 9 November 1915. He studied at the Budapest School of Fine Arts before moving to Paris in 1934, where he studied in the atelier of poster artist Adolphe Cassandre from 1935 to 1936. Upon the recommendation of his teacher, he designed his first posters for the French department store Galeries Lafayette and was commissioned to create works for the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne in Paris. He became a naturalized citizen in in 1939 and changed his surname to François, fearing for his Jewish family’s safety.

At the fall of France in 1940, he moved his family to Marseilles and then Savoie. After the liberation of France, they returned to Paris, eventually settling in a farmhouse in Grisy-les-Plâtres, where he set up his studio in the garden. There, he created mixed-media sculptures and paintings, working within themes of nature and animals.

François’s printmaking career included both fine and commercial work. From the 1930s he created lithographic posters for film and theater, and in the 1960s and ‘70s began to experiment with printmaking as a fine art. He focused on abstract color etching and lithography and became known for his bold, rough abstractions of people and animals, sometimes humorous, sometimes verging on Surrealism.

His prolific career also expanded into cartoon and illustration. François drew political cartoons for the Leftist publication Le Nouvel Observateur, soon gaining recognition by major publications throughout Europe, the U.K., and the U.S. He illustrated nearly fifty covers for the New Yorker, as well as several for Punch, Sports Illustrated, Life, Vogue, Esquire, Le Mode, and Fortune. Additionally, he illustrated a variety of book covers and published his own children’s books. He was a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale.

François exhibited widely, including major retrospectives at the Museé d’Art moderne in Paris in 1986 and the Mitsukoshi Museum, Tokyo in 1995. He was named a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1975 and, in 1977, was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of London. A studio fire in 2002 destroyed all his work, including sculpture, paintings, and works on paper. The following year, he held an exhibition at the Centre Pompidou, titled Ordeal by Fire.

André François died on 11 April 2005, at the age of eighty-nine-years-old.