Marcel Bascoulard was the son of Léon Bascoulard and Marguerite, née Mulet. During World War II, he often incorporated his mother’s name into his signature, adding a diaeresis to the "u" in Mület as a gesture of derision toward the occupying forces. At the age of nineteen, he was deeply affected by the murder of his father on September 25, 1932—a crime committed by his mother, who was subsequently committed to a psychatric hospital.
Marcel Bascoulard chose a life of marginality from an early age. He lived in makeshift shelters—garden sheds, attics, ruins—such as those in the Avaricum district of Bourges. He spent his final years in Asnières-lès-Bourges (Cher), living in the cab of a truck given to him by a scrapyard owner.
In the 1930s, he began drawing in Saint-Florent-sur-Cher (Cher) and later in the streets of Bourges. Architect Marcel Pinon, who designed Bourges' Maison de la Culture, noticed his work and invited him to take classes at the municipal school of fine arts. However, this experience was brief, as Bascoulard remained largely self-taught. As a witness to Bourges' transformation in the 1950s and 1960s, he documented many of the city’s streets and landmarks, including the Saint-Étienne Cathedral. His works primarily consist of ink drawings of landscapes, rarely featuring human figures, and only occasionally include color paintings.
He quickly became a well-known figure in Bourges, living as a vagrant, recognizable by his unusual attire and his peculiar recumbent tricycle. Often dressed as a woman in self-made garments, he was arrested multiple times, receiving police citations to which he responded with letters invoking his right to dress as he pleased. Over the course of his life, he created numerous photographic self-portraits wearing his various feminine outfits.
A highly eclectic artist, he also wrote poetry and produced several maps.
On January 12, 1978, he was murdered in Asnières-lès-Bourges, in the Les Gargaudières area, strangled by a 23-year-old drifter who was sentenced to fifteen years in prison the following year.