Carzou was born in the city of Aleppo in northern Syria, to an Armenian family. He was educated in Cairo, before going to Paris in 1924 to study architecture. From 1939 onwards, he held over 100 solo exhibitions across Paris, France, and the rest of the world. In 1976, Carzou's work was featured on France's stamps, the first contemporary artist to receive such honor. In 1977, he was elected a member of the Institut de France, Académie des beaux-arts. Inspired by Freud, he used symbolic elements to recreate dreams. He also published satirical political cartoons in the newspaper. La Chambre bleue was created in 1979. Blue and dark brown cut through the image, creating a melancholy tone. The regular lines on the wall, like lines on graph paper for stage design, add depth to the image. The figure in the foreground is depicted with Carzou's classic technique of overlaying lines, so that the silhouette appears messy, when it is actually made up of precise layers of lines. Years of experience in stage art and design have seeped into Carzou's artistic language, and even his oil paintings have a strong hand-drawn effect.