The 2020 Grand Prize for the city of Angoulême accompanies the opening of the 48th Comic Strip Festival with its exhibition “In good company”.
The voice of a veteran
One day when he was looking for his way to Saint-Martin-de-Ré, Emmanuel Guibert spoke to a man who saws wood in front of his house. It’s Alan Cope, American veteran installed there since the Liberation. The meeting marks the beginning of a great friendship forged around a piano, swimming and around fifty hours of interviews which served as the basis for five albums: “Alan’s War” and its suites. Alan disappeared in 1999 but the last book from his memories appeared in 2016, more are announced. A jazz record inspired by the saga was released last year on the Vision Fugitive label for which Guibert signs all the covers.
Geo Trouvetou of the drawing
“Friend biographer”, as he defines himself, Emmanuel Guibert retraced in the three volumes of “Photographer” (2003-2006) the fiery road traveled by the photoreporter Didier Lefèvre in Afghanistan, in 1986. The book translated in 20 languages has received the prestigious Eisner Prize. To stick as closely as possible to the story of the war, Guibert has combined his drawings with the photographs of Lefèvre, a landmark innovation. This is because we do not lock Guibert in a box. “Alan” bet on sepia and grainy, “Ariol” bursts with color … “Each project allows you to express a new voice. The exhibition dedicated to him unveils works in the open air, carried out using a tree branch soaked in mud.
The nice buddies of the workshop
In the mid-1990s, Emmanuel Guibert joined the Vosges workshop, a roommate of designers who have since become the new gold of the comic book: Sfar, Blain, David B., Marjane Satrapi … “Until then, I worked alone, especially in illustration and storyboard. I evolved in their company within a platform that multiplied initiatives, friendships, multiple expressions. “And collaborations, since Guibert has produced albums with his office neighbors, Sfar and David B. A passage from” Japanese “(2008) transposes the adventures of the workshop to the Japan of the 1920s.
Also read.Joann Sfar: the gifted
Donkey, his donkey brother
Ariol, the little blue donkey with glasses, goes back to his fourth grade in every volume published since 2002 by Guibert and Boutavant. “I couldn’t have done this job without talking to children,” says Guibert. After “Sardine of space”, “an unbridled space opera full of calambours”, signed with Joann Sfar and Mathieu Sapin, he imagined a series in the opposite, “centered on the psychological and the everyday”. “Ariol” is available in an animated version, on records and on stage, with the Ariol’s Show, where Guibert, wearing donkey ears, rolls on stage in front of an audience of kids.
Also read. BD: The highlights of the Angoulême festival
Baby bubbles
The first word Emmanuel Guibert (56 years old) uttered was “pencil”. Her grandmother read to her the tirade of Tournesol in “Objectif Lune”. And the old “Spirou” of his father accompanied his early childhood, on the banks of the Durance. Guibert pushed in the shadow of comics, with Goscinny in particular “for accomplice”. After the first publications at the age of 15, for the Lyon airport, and a lightning passage in Decorative Arts, the author flew to the walls of the Academy of Fine Arts this fall, a first in the comic book history. “Me, I do this job to be present in the world,” he said, “to capture life through observation and conversation. ”
FIBD, January 29-30 and June 24-29. “In good company”, Angoulême museum, from January 30 to June 27. maam.angouleme.fr.
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