René Marcel Carcan, painter, engraver, sculptor and designer, was born on 25 May 1925 in Brussels, Belgium. He first trained in sculptor with D. Jacobs at the Académie Saint-Josse-ten-Noode and then, from 1941 to 1946, with Léon Devos at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.

Carcan began to exhibit his work in 1952 and was awarded a UNESCO scholarship which allowed him to study in Rome and Florence between 1958 and 1959. He decided to take up engraving and, between 1960 and 1965, he attended the Parisian workshop of Johnny Friedlander, who introduced him to color engraving.

Carcan began exhibiting in Paris in 1962 and, in 1963, he was a founding member of Cap d'Encre along with Pierre Alechinsky, Gabriel Belgeonne, Francis De Bolle, Lismonde, Marc Laffineur, and Gustave Marchoul. This group of artists shared a common passion for exploring new ideas and challenging conventional artistic norms.

The work of Carcan was exhibited in Biennales in Tokyo in 1966, in Krakow in 1979, and in Ljubljana in 1968 and 1970. He had solo exhibitions in Belgium, France, Holland, Germany, Italy, and the United States.

The Fondation René Carcan was established on the site of Carcan's old studio in Brussels, dedicated to the preservation and study of his work. It closed in 2006 and the foundation became known as Espace René Carcan which established the René Carcan International Prize for Printmaking.

René Carcan’s work is represented in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris and, in Belgium, his work is in the collections of the Royal Museums of Fine Arts in Brussels, the Musée communal d'Ixelles in Brussels, the Royal Library of Belgium in Brussels, the Centre de la Gravure et de l'Image imprimée in La Louvière, the Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins in Liège, and the Musée universitaire de Louvain, the Musée Royal de Mariemont.

René Marcel Carcan died 19 January 1993 in Etterbeek, Belgium.