Artist Profile | Cartoon & Caricature

Jean Jacques Sempé

Sempé is one of the caricaturists who has best portrayed French society, especially Parisian daily life, but he has also managed to reflect the rural environment. Born in Bordeaux in 1932, he published his first drawing at the age of 18 in the local newspaper “Sud-Ouest” and soon began collaborating on “Noir et Blanc”. Later he did it in "Paris Match", "Punch" and other prestigious publishers, such as "L' Express". Already in 1952 he obtained the "Carrizey" prize, intended for novice cartoonists. He became famous for his caricatures, starring characters who rarely articulate words but who are capable of communicating an idea from simplicity, with exquisite humor. He has published thirty books with his drawings and has illustrated a hundred covers for "The New Yorker" magazine, but for the general public, Sempé is the cartoonist of "Little Nicolás", a series he created in 1956 with screenwriter René Goscinny (under the pseudonym Agostini) for the Belgian magazine “Le Moustique”. Starting in 1959, “Little Nicolás” began to be published in “Sud-Ouest Dimanche” and “Pilote” and, from 1960, in compilation books. More than ten million copies of the books that make up this series, starring a 7-year-old boy, have been sold worldwide. In Spain, Sempé's work has been known since, in 1956, many of his drawings were published in the "Humor selections" section of Bruguera's "DDT" comics magazine. The political magazine "Triunfo" also received its inimitable cartoons on its pages between 1962 and 1971. The first book of "El Pequeño Nicolás" came in 1962 from the "Vergara" publishing house and, later, the series went to other publishers, such as " Doncel”, “Planeta”, “Alfaguara”, “Círculo de Lectores”, “La Galera” and “Loqueleo”, also being published in Catalan. In 1973, the publishing house “Fundamentos” published in Spanish “Sálvese quien puede”, a translation of the original in French “Sauve qui peut”. Likewise, in 1973, the Madrid-born Júcar released "Nothing is easy" and "Everything is complicated" and two years later, "El gran pánico", for his collection "Los humoristas". In 2004, the publishing house "El Jueves" put up for sale both volumes of "El mundo de Sempé", in 2015 "Norma Editorial" grouped the books "Ellas y Los" in its humor collection and in 2016, the Barcelona-based Blackie Books published "Marcelín". In the summer of 2009, within the framework of the Madrid Book Fair, a sample of Sempé's original work could be visited for the first time in the Community of Madrid tent. In 2012, the Paris City Hall dedicated a large exhibition to Sempé that brought together more than three hundred drawings. The exhibition was organized by the "Galerie Martine Gossieaux" in Paris, depositary of the Sempé collection. In Barcelona, at the end of 2015, around thirty serigraphs and engravings signed and numbered by Sempé could be seen in the “Jaimes” bookstore in Barcelona. In the summer of 2016, coinciding with the passage of the Tour de France in Andorra, another exhibition of drawings by Sempé could be seen at the Escaldes-Engordany Art Center (CAEE), with the bicycle as its theme.