In 1955, he published his first magazine of Art, Poetry and Politic magazine Front Unique, in Florence where he held his first exhibition at La Galleria Numero. After a turbulent time with the surrealists, he exhibited his work at Arturo Schwarz in Milan and Iris Clert and Simone Collinet in Paris. He then showed his work in innumerable museums and galleries throughout the world.

In 1960, in Venice, Jean-Jacques Lebel produced L'Enterrement de la Chose, the first European Happening. He published his first art criticism in French on this phenomenon that was developing throughout the world. From that point on, he produced more than seventy shows, performances and art actions across the continents, continuing his pictorial, literary and political activities. He worked in Paris, London, New York and other places with Oldenburg, Kaprow, Kudo, Errò, Carolee Schneemann, Yoko Ono, Pommereulle, Nam June Paik, Filliou, etc. In the 60's, he translated and published into French the work of his friends William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso and Michael Mc Clure.

In 1964 he started the Festival de la Libre Expression, then in 1979 the International Polyphonix Festival which included artists, poets, films-makers, musicians from many different countries. These touring and independent events, present direct poetry, performance art, concerts, exhibitions, film and video works. Polyphonix invited more than one thousand artists from different artistic backgrounds in Paris, San Francisco, Milan, New York, Budapest, Quebec, Naples, Creteil, Brussels, Parma, Credac d'Ivry to the La Verrière Hospital, Rome, Barcelona, Hungary, Montenegro, Tourcoing and the Hippodrome in Caen in 2001. Most major contemporary artists, poets, musicians and film makers from all five continents have participated in the nomadic and multicultural laboratory of free artistic activity which is Polyphonix. It’s 40th Anniversary took place in October 2002 at the Centre Pompidou, at the La Maison de la Radio, at Fresnoy and at the La Verrière Hospital, in co-production with fifteen foreign cultural institutes. An illustrated anthology and CD accompanied the event. In 1967, he directed Le désir attrapé par la queue the play written by Picasso, with Taylor Mead, Rita Renoir, Ultra Violet and the English Rock band Soft Machine.

In 1968, Jean-Jacques Lebel joined the Mouvement du 22 mars, and the Anarchist Groups Noir et Rouge and Informations et Correspondances Ouvrières. He studied with the philosopher Gilles Deleuze at the Universities of Vincennes and Saint-Denis. He produced programmes for French Radio on Allen Ginsberg, Pierre Clastres, le Comité d'Action LIP, Linton Kwesi Johnson and a number of other issues related to culture and politics.

In the 1970's, he headed with Daniel Guerin (Editions Pierre Belford in Paris) the book Collection Changer la vie! which republished many important historical documents of the International Anarchist movement.

He organised or co-organised a number of collaborative, individual or with differently themed exhibitions which included L'Anti-procès (Paris, Venice, Milan, 1960-1961) Polyphonix (1982, Paris); Les Scapes de Errò (A.R.C. Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris en 1985) ; Désir/Désordre (the Gallery, Milan, 1990) ; Victor Hugo, peintre (Museum of Modern Art in Venice, 1993) ; Picabia, Dalmau 1922 (IVAM in Valencia 1995, Tapiès Foundation in Barcelona and the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris, Centre Georges Pompidou, 1996) ; Cent Cadavres Exquis, Juegos Surrealistas (Fundaciòn Colleccion Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid in 1996-1997) ; a new show of Victor Hugo's art work - co-produced with the National Library of France - at the Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza in Madrid and at Victor Hugo's house in Paris in 2002 ; an exhibition revealing the permanence and the complexity of Picasso's erotic inspiration, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal in 2001: Picasso érotique. In 2004, the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf will present Artaud et le Cinéma, a montage of nineteen previously unknown films in which Artaud played co-organised by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Dominique Païni.

Since 1988, returning from a long exile of solitude and meditation, Jean-Jacques Lebel started to show again in galleries and Museums in Europe, the USA and Japan. In 1992, the Kjarvalstadir (Modern Art Museum) in Reykjavik organised a grand scale exhibition of his work. His Monument à Félix Guattari - an 8 meter high motorised multimedia turning machine in which more than sixty people performed - was presented in 1994 and 1995 at the Centre Georges Pompidou in the exhibition Hors limites, l'Art et la Vie. Electrified maquettes of the Monument were shown in May 1996 at the Galerie de Paris and the Galerie 1900-2000 as well as in August 1996 at the Galleria Mancini in Pesaro for his exhibition titled Rue Rossini. He participated in many important collaborative and themed exhibitions : Ubi Fluxus Ibi Motus (Venice Biennale), Poésure et Peintrie (Marseille); L'Amore (Turin); Hors limites, L'art et la vie, (Paris) Fémininmasculin (Paris); Out of Actions (Los Angeles, Vienna, Barcelona, Tokyo); L'Artiste face à L'Histoire (Paris); L'Art et le septiéme Art (Tourcoing); L'Anormalità dell' Arte (Milan); Jardin d'Eros (Barcelona and Bergen); Collections d'artistes (Avignon) Sade – Surreal (Zürich); Paris, Capital of the Arts (London and Bilbao); Das Endlose Rätsel, La Double Image (Düsseldorf); The Phantom of Desire (Graz), Global Village, The Sixties (Montreal and Dallas).

His most recent touring exhibition - the polymorphic and evolutionary installation Reliquaire pour un culte de Vénus composed of more than three thousand pieces collected in Europe throughout Europe - took place in 2001 and 2002 at FRAC, Basse-Normandie in Caen, at the Casino in Luxembourg, at Crédac d'Ivry, at the Villa Tamaris in la Seyne-sur-mer, and at the French Institute in Barcelona in 2003. Its latest version will be shown in 2004 in Paris at the Louis Carré gallery.

The director of the Kunst Palace Museum in Düsseldorf, Jean Hubert Martin, has commissioned Jean-Jacques Lebel to produce a sound installation concerning an Arno Breker stone sculpture called Aurora - enthroned on the Museum's roof - and two bronze female nudes by Gottschalk, guarding the Museum entrance. Examples of pre-nazi classic kitsch which Lebel has completely transformed by making them talk and sing in Dada language.

Jean-Jacques Lebel is now finishing a film titled Les avatars de Vénus. Several films include his work and/or his life: Le Cowboy et l'Indien by Alain Fleischer (1994); Le Monument à Felix Guattari (with numerous participants) by François Pain (1995); Trois Happenings de Jean-Jacques Lebel by Jean-Michel Bouhours (2001).