He frequented jazz clubs in Saint-Germain des Près, and while listening to Sidney Bechet at the Vieux Colombier, he met his wife, Yvette.

After graduating in 1955, he was drafted for military service, spent time in Germany and Morocco, and was sent to the front lines of the Algerian War.

Pierre Seghers commissioned him to draw some thirty illustrations for Chansons et Complaintes, a collection of poems published in 1959.

[2] Beginning in the 1950s, his works included stylized portraits similar in some ways to the "big eyes" art of Margaret Keane, though it is uncertain that either artist influenced the other.

[2] At the same time, he met Reine Ausset in Paris, who in 1961 invited him to New York to take part in an exhibition at Galerie Norval on 57th Street.

"[12] In the 1960s he began painting slender, young, androgynous figures in groups, set in sparse landscapes with suggestions of the surreal and sometimes wearing costumes of the Commedia dell'arte.

Also in 1965, he discovered the small town of Martel, and with his old roommate Jean-Baptiste Valadié purchased a house that they opened as the gallery La Licorne (The Unicorn) in 1967.

[2] Responding to the political upheavals of May 1968 in France, and following the advice of Geneva gallery owner Roger Ferrero, Serrier's work became increasingly complex, idiosyncratic, and surreal.

Imagery included the Tower of Babel,[15] bodies suspended in space,[16] and crowds of people all dressed alike, with identical features and entirely black eyes.

[2] In 1972, he was made a member of the Société du Salon d'Automne, under whose auspices he was invited by the Polish government to exhibit in Warsaw in 1973, as part of a cultural exchange across the Iron Curtain.

"[22] In 1986, Schon mounted The First Major Retrospective Exhibition of Works by French Surrealist Jean Pierre Serrier in New York.