Paris (AFP)
The cartoonist Piem, who mischievously crunched the news in the 70s program "Le Petit Rapporteur", died Thursday, his 97th birthday, his eldest son told AFP.
"Press cartoonist, humanist", Piem, whose real name is Pierre Georges Marie de Barrigue de Montvallon, had also "worked for 36 years at Figaro, then at the Cross," his family recalled in a statement.
"He's smart, he decided to leave on his birthday, it was someone amazing, our father," cartoonist Barrigue, the first of his seven children, told AFP.
Born on November 12, 1923 in Saint-Etienne, and although coming from a family that had belonged to the nobility of dress of Aix-en-Provence, Piem clearly displayed his ideas of the left.
A graduate of the National School of Fine Arts, he liked to laughingly decline his artist name as follows: "Prodigious, Irresistible, Extraordinary, Modest".
He had gained notoriety thanks to his participation in the program of Jacques Martin, the "Little reporter", broadcast live on TF1 every Sunday between January 1975 and June 1976.
There he produced a very popular press review in drawings, "Piem's little week", in front of the viewers.
Piem has rubbed shoulders with the program Pierre Desproges, Daniel Prévost and Stéphane Collaro.
Dean of the band at the height of his 51 years, the cartoonist was at the time nicknamed "the ancestor" on the air by Jacques Martin.
The concept of the little Rapporteur was taken up by the same team on Antenne 2, under the name of "La Lorgnette", between 1977 and 1978.
Piem had lived in retirement for many years in Touraine, in the small town of Notre-Dame-d'Oé.
He was commander of the Order of Arts and Letters.
© 2020 AFP