Bordeaux (AFP)
More than 300 original drawings of Sempé, father of the little Nicolas and author of a hundred of cover of the New Yorker, are exposed since Tuesday in Bordeaux, his native city, spotlight on nearly 70 years of creation.
"This is not the first exhibition Sempé but it is the first to be designed as a retrospective of his work," says Marc Lecarpentier, one of the two curators with Martine Gossieaux of this exhibition, visible at the Museum Sea Marine until to 6 October.
"Sempé en liberté" shows the creative itinerary of Jean-Jacques Sempé, from his first doodles on the letterhead of the wine broker where he worked in 1950, to recent drawings still unpublished through his first real works published in the newspaper Sud Ouest and the inevitable adventures of "Petit Nicolas", world-famous character created with René Goscinny and who has just turned 60 years old.
The installation shows that over the years Sempé has moved away from the sole objective of humor to take a deeper look at society, and wants to highlight what makes the heart of the work of the artist, "This gap between the huge universe and the small worries of everyday life" according to Mr. Lecarpentier.
Present at the vernissage on Tuesday, 86-year-old Sempé says he is still working on his drawing table. "I always work and even that it bores me often", slips in a teasing tone that usually avoids microphones and cameras.
"It's imaginative, with a pencil in his hand and an electronic cigarette in the other, he's waiting for it to come in. And it's coming," says Marc Lecarpentier about the one who signed his first drawings in South -West under the pseudonym of DRO, the verb to draw in English (to draw) pronounced with a French accent.
In addition to a few rarities, such as advertising work for a laboratory and political drawings, the exhibition presents one of Sempé's only sketches evoking Bordeaux, which he left for Paris at the age of 20: a city caught in a storm. water ... "Bordeaux, it does not rejuvenate me," slipped the designer, a little stingy words but no smiles.
? 2019 AFP