About Jean-Jacques Lequeu
French bureaucrat, pornographer, draftsman and architect, forerunner of surrealism, and "inventor of bad taste". His name means, literally, "Jack the Cock".
Born in Rouen, Lequeu won a scholarship to study architecture in Paris, but after the Revolution his architectural career never took off. He spent many years working privately on architectural portfolios, notably "Architecture civile" and "Nouvelle methode", which were never published in his lifetime.
Obsessed with petrified forms and having a recurring preoccupation with sex, Lequeu ended up living in a brothel and working on his portfolios "Encyclopedia of the Universe" and "Lewd Figures"
On his death Lequeu gave most his of drawings and manuscripts to the Bibliotheque nationale de France.
In the 1930s Lequeu's oeuvre was rediscovered by dadaists, surrealists, and futurists, particularly the circles of Marcel Duchamp and Le Corbusier. A recent biographer believes that Duchamp tampered extensively with the portfolios.
![Classical Illustrations [c.1790s]](http://www.erotomane.co.uk/t/n/398425/118139Autoportrait%20de%20Lequeu.jpg "Classical Illustrations [c.1790s]")
![Figure Studies & Anatomical Drawings [c.1780s]](http://www.erotomane.co.uk/t/n/398607/81139La%20sauvage%20blanche.jpg "Figure Studies & Anatomical Drawings [c.1780s]")
![Grotesques & Other Scenes [c.1780s]](http://www.erotomane.co.uk/t/n/398593/139127La%20ruse%20decouverte.jpg "Grotesques & Other Scenes [c.1780s]")