Marcel Paquet was born in 1947 in Jumet, Belgium. After obtaining his doctorate in 1978 from the Free University of Brussels with a thesis entitled "La Difference des Pensees de Kant et de Hegel dans la question de l'essence de l'art," he began work on a monumental "Encyclopedie philosophique de la peinture contemporaine." Dividing his time between Brussels and Paris, he has published a number of books on such subjects as Magritte, Paul Delvaux, Botero, and Hans Bellmer.