He rose to fame as the creator of the children’s book series Little Nick. French artist Jean-Jacques Sempé is now dead.
Mourning for the draftsman and caricaturist Jean-Jacques Sempé (1932-2022): The Frenchman, best known as the creator of the children’s book series “Little Nick”, died on August 11 at the age of 89 – just a few days before his 90th birthday on August 17th. His biographer and friend Marc Lecarpentier and his wife confirmed this to the AFP news agency. Accordingly, Sempé fell asleep peacefully with his family.
Born in Bordeaux in 1932, Jean-Jacques Sempé discovered his talent for drawing while still at school. Together with the “Asterix” author René Goscinny (1926-1977), he invented the famous children’s book series “Der kleine Nick” (original title: “Le petit Nicolas”) in the 1950s. The first stories about the little boy were first published in comic form in a Belgian magazine.
Over the next six years, more than 200 episodes were made about little Nick, and later the comics were published as books and translated into 30 languages. Around 15 million copies were sold in 45 different countries. Later, “Little Nick” was filmed as an animated series.
The typical Sempé style
Sempé was also known for his artistically high-quality covers for various front pages, such as the US magazine “New Yorker”. He also designed cartoons for magazines such as Paris Match, Marie Claire, L’Express and the New York Times.
His signature style was tiny human figures seen from a distant vantage point in a landscape or elaborate cityscape. Among his colleagues, Sempé was considered a master of panorama drawings.
Source: Stern
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