André Franquin

Franquin's beginnings Franquin was born in Etterbeek in 1924. Although he started drawing at an early age, Franquin got his first actual drawing lessons at École Saint-Luc in 1943. A year later, however, the school was forced to close down because of the war and Franquin was then hired by Compagnie belge d'actualités (CBA), a short-lived animation studio in Brussels. It is there he met some of his future colleagues: Maurice de Bevere (Morris, creator of Lucky Luke), Pierre Culliford (Peyo, creator of the Smurfs), and Eddy Paape. Three of them (minus Peyo) were hired by Dupuis in 1945, following CBA's demise. Peyo, still too young, would only follow them seven years later. Franquin started drawing covers and cartoons for Le Moustique, a weekly magazine about radio and culture. From 1978 to 1986, he was part of the team that developed the concept of Isabelle, the adventures of a little girl in a world of witches and monsters. The character was named after Franquin's daughter. Proof of his popular and critical appeal, Franquin was awarded the very first Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême in 1974. Many books by Franquin have been published, many of which are considered classics of the genre. They have been translated into many languages. Several books have been written about Franquin, such as Numa Sadoul's Et Franquin créa la gaffe, an exhaustive interview with the artist covering his entire career. Franquin died in 1997 in Saint-Laurent-du-Var at the age of 73 from a heart attack. He was previously married to Liliane Servais. In 2004 took place the first major museum retrospective of his work, an exhibit called "Le monde de Franquin", in Paris' Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie. This exhibition was continued in 2006 in the city where he was born, Brussels, the latter was fully bilingual (French/Dutch). In 2005, a Walloon survey elected him as the "18th greatest Belgian ever". ==Influence==

Franquin's style rests in opposite corners of the aesthetic spectrum from Hergé: If the pictures of Tintin's creator were characterized by the use of ligne claire, flat colors, and certain statics, Franquin's graphic approach progressively evolved towards a multi-color aesthetics, chiaroscuro and a vigorous sense of movement. Hergé expressed on several occasions his admiration for Franquin's work: "Compared to him, I’m but a poor draftsman". Franquin was a prominent member of the first generation of the “Marcinelle School” (École de Marcinelle), also formed by Morris and Will, who would be joined during the 50s by the second generation including, among others, Peyo, Tillieux, and two subsequent generations joining during the 60s and 70-80s. Within this group, Franquin's influence was uncontested, especially among the authors that continued the series Spirou et Fantasio after he left. Jean-Claude Fournier, Nic Broca, and especially Janry (Jean-Richard Geurts) showed in this series graphic styles that tried to mimic with varying degrees of success the features of Franquin's style. Other Franco-Belgian authors that show Franquin's influence were Dino Attanasio and Mittéï (Jean Mariette), both responsible for the series Modeste et Pompon after he left, Jidéhem (Jean De Mesmaeker), a usual collaborator of Franquin for Spirou et Fantasio and Gaston Lagaffe, Batem (Luc Collin), artist of the Marsupilami series, or Pierre Seron, who cloned Franquin's style in his series Les Petits Hommes. A most remarkable case is Franquin's influence on Francisco Ibáñez, possibly the most widely published Spanish author since the 1950s. Starting in the 1970s, Ibáñez made extensive use of ideas and designs from Franquin's works, adapting them to his own universe, but also importing many graphic and narrative solutions. Even one of his characters, "El Botones Sacarino", can be easily identified as a hybrid of Spirou (he is a bellboy) and Gaston Lagaffe (he works in a publishing company and is the source of never-ending disasters), whom he resembles physically. Franquin's shadow is even more obvious in the work of Ramón María Casanyes, a disciple and ghost collaborator of Ibáñez, especially in some of his solo works such as the short-lived "Tito, Homo Sapiens 2000", where the Franco-Belgian descent is unquestionable. ==Awards and honors==

File:Sign André Franquin.jpg|Sign in Brussels, tribute to André Franquin File:FIBD2017EspaceFranquin.jpg|Espace Franquin at Angoulême • 1972: Prix Saint-Michel, Belgium, for Gaston Lagaffe • 1974: First Grand Prix de la ville d'Angoulême, France • 1980: Adamson Award, Sweden • 1981: Prix Saint-Michel, Belgium, for Idées noires • 1987: Grand Prix for the Graphic Arts at the Angoulême International Comics Festival • 1991: Knight of the Order of Leopold, Belgium, for most than twenty years of career • 1996: Special Prize for outstanding life's work at the Max & Moritz Prizes in Erlangen, Germany • 2017: Asteroid 293985 Franquin, discovered by French amateur astronomer Bernard Christophe in 2007, was named in his memory. The official was published by the Minor Planet Center on 12 March 2017 (). ==Bibliography==