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French draftsman Semp is dead

French draftsman Semp is dead

The French illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé, who became world famous with his series “Little Nick”, is dead. Sempé died on Thursday evening at the age of 89 in his holiday resort “peacefully” and “surrounded by his wife and close friends”, explained Sempés Biographer and friend Marc Lecarpentier told AFP. His wife Martine Gossieaux Sempé also confirmed the death of her husband, who would have turned 90 next week.

France’s head of state Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to the late artist. “The delicate irony, the delicacy of intelligence, the jazz: we will not be able to forget Jean-Jacques Sempé,” wrote Macron on the online service Instagram. “We will sorely miss his gaze and his pen.” Sempé’s work was always characterized by lightness, at the same time “nothing escaped” the draftsman’s eye.

French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne sent her condolences to Sempé’s family and friends on Twitter. “Sempé, that was the drawing and the text. It was the smile and the poetry.” Sempé’s readers sometimes laughed tears – today they would shed tears of sadness.

Sempé invented the character of the little boy Nick, who lived in France in the 1950s, together with “Asterix” author René Goscinny. The first story appeared on March 29, 1959 in the regional newspaper “Sud-Ouest Dimanche”.

Within six years, more than 200 episodes were published about Nick, his always hungry friend Otto, the bespectacled nerd Adalbert and Franz who was ready to be beaten. They later appeared as books and were translated into 30 languages. 15 million copies have been sold in 45 countries, they have been filmed and adapted as an animated series.

Sempé himself said of the series in 2018 that it was “a way for him to relive the misery that I experienced in my childhood while making sure that everything turns out well”. He was born on August 17, 1932 as an illegitimate child in the village of Pessac near Bordeaux. He initially grew up in a violent foster family until his mother took him back – and thus exposed him to his stepfather’s violence.

Sempé originally wanted to be a jazz pianist and left school at the age of 14 to join the military. But the military drill was just as bad for him: Sempé began selling drawings to Paris newspapers. While working for a news agency, he became friends with Goscinny – and thus laid the foundation for the later world success with “Little Nick”.

In the first few years, however, hardly anyone was interested in the little boy’s drawings. Sempé kept his head above water financially with drawings for newspapers; they were “terrible” years, Sempé later said.

Sempé only got a solid income when he worked for the US magazine “New Yorker”, which hired him in 1978. “I was almost 50 and for the first time in my life I existed,” Sempé later said of this turning point in his life. In the years that followed, Sempé illustrated more front pages of the “New Yorker”, known for its artistically high-quality covers, than any other artist.

Source: Nachrichten

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