Jean-Claude Claeys was born in Paris in 1951, and launched his career as an illustrator in the 1970s with a story about a private eye.

His brilliant work from that time onward has continued to reflect the visual and thematic influence of film noir, with femmes fatale and cynical heroes who live in an amoral world of sex, seduction and murder.

Claeys creates his stunningly photo-realist art from snap-shots of models, meticulously drawing the reference images in pencil before inking them to complete the final black and white story panels.

Like many French artists in the field of graphic novels, Claeys has been published in Metal Hurlant Magazine, to which he contributed the series called 'Lüger et Paix'

Claeys has illustrated movie posters and the cover art for many issues of Hitchcock Magazine and crime novels by Neo Publishing.