Stan Manoukian

Passionate about drawing since childhood, he draws inspiration from retro science fiction, classic monster movies, and novels by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Mary Shelley, and Jules Verne. 

In 1988, fresh out of the École d’Art Estienne, he began his career in France and the United States as a comic artist, designer, and storyboard artist for film and advertising. 

In 2007, he undertook a personal artistic challenge: to draw one monster a day for a year. This large-scale initiative led to the book Diary of Inhuman Species, published by Ankama the following year. Since 2008, his exploration of his phantasmagorical world has led him toward increasingly large and ambitious projects, as he experiments with various techniques, moving from drawing to sculpture. He is now part of the global post-lowbrow generation, with increasingly detailed compositions teeming with dreamlike creatures that evoke 19th-century Romantic painting. Thus, his bestiary of creatures - halfway between aliens, animals, and beings from the abyssal depths - transports us to a fantastical and surreal universe where nature is omnipresent. 

His entire body of work on the fantastical bestiary was compiled in a monograph, Zoologia, published by Cernunnos in 2019. In 2023, he collaborated with Sébastien Perez and Benjamin Lacombe on the book Les Monstres in the L’Encyclopédie du merveilleux collection published by Albin Michel. 

Finally, in the fall of 2025, Gallimard released Mary Shelley's unabridged illustrated novel Frankenstein in their Papillon Noir collection - a magnificent Gothic masterpiece that laid the foundation for science fiction. 

An heir to Gustave Doré, Franklin Booth and Bernie Wrightson, Stan Manoukian has refined a unique graphic style. Through a technique of hatching and blending - whether using ink or graphite - he creates an engraving-like effect. 

Now internationally recognized, his artworks have been featured in several exhibitions and books in the United States, Japan, Australia, France, and other European countries.