Familiar with the Nabis and later the Fauves and a pupil of Pierre Andrieu (a former collaborator of Delacroix) and Gustave Moreau, René Piot was also an innovator of the art of frescos, a theatre director and a decorator of an extraordinary modernity.

Although he was fundamentally independent, he was in many respects the fellow-traveller of the most modern pictorial currents of his time.

From 1910 onwards, his main activity was in the field of theatre. His work with Jacques Rouché at the Théâtre des Arts shows a complete command of both theoretical and practical scenography. At first creator of theatre sets and costumes, René Piot, whose assets were an impressive musical culture and an innate sense of the theatrical, soon intervened in the direction and even in the choreography. He brought an immediate comprehension of the scenic space, a perpetually renovated inspiration and a pictorial treatment displaying a rare originality which took the shape of a succession of coloured rhythms. He thus created two masterpieces : The Trojans by Hector Berlioz in 1921 and Electra by Richard Strauss in 1932.