François Schuiten was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1956. During his studies at the Saint-Luc Institute in Brussels, François Schuiten met Claude Renard, who led the comics department at the school. Together they created several books. Schuiten´s brother Luc also worked with him several times as a writer for the series Terres Creuses. François Schuiten published his first comic in 1973. Inspired by artists and scientists alike, Schuiten´s work can be considered to mix the worlds of René Magritte, the early scientific fantasies of Jules Verne, the graphical worlds of M. C. Escher and Gustave Doré, and the architectural visions of Victor Horta and Étienne-Louis Boullée. As a scenographer, François Schuiten designed the metro stations of Porte de Hal in Brussels and Arts et Métiers in Paris, and a mural in Brussels. In 2000, he designed the scenography for A planet of visions in the Hannover World´s Fair. He also created the interior of the Belgian pavilion at the Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan with the painter Alexandre Obolensky. François Schuiten has also designed 15 Belgian stamps.