The Angoulême comic book festival, which will be held from March 17 to 20, offers a major retrospective on the work of Chris Ware.
An essential Comic book artist
Among the exhibitions, the “Building Chris Ware” retrospective is not to be missed. Grand Prix 2021 of the festival, Chris Ware is an essential comic book artist. He is an author of exceptional inventiveness who has methodically explored all the potential of the comic medium for almost thirty years. Developed in close collaboration with the American, the major retrospective devoted to him “seeks to guide visitors through the author’s work and, in this way, to bring them to the heart of the mysteries of the 9th art“. As for objects, there will be many original plates presented to the public as well as rare prints and objects designed by the artist.
He received numerous awards
Chris Ware was born in 1967 in Omaha in the United States. In the early 1990s, he began a large-scale work with the “Acme Novelty” series, a true-false magazine with changing form and pagination which installed the author’s soon-to-be-famous characters: “Quimby the Mouse“, “Rusty Brown” and especially “Jimmy Corrigan”. Chris Ware has received numerous awards, including 28 Harvey Awards and 22 Eisner Awards. In 2012, the author published the remarkable “Building Stories”, an impressive book-object made up of around fifteen books in various formats that can be read in an order chosen by the reader – the latter received the Special Jury Prize at the Angoulême Festival in 2013. At the end of 2020, Delcourt published his new work, already published in the United States, “Rusty Brown“.
Grateful to the French
This retrospective will follow a globally chronological thread. The many original boards presented to the public will be accompanied by rare prints and objects designed by the artist. A special place will be reserved for “Building Stories”. Critically acclaimed Building Stories, contains 14 notebooks. Nesting stories that first appeared in American newspapers are brought together in this impressive book. Published in English in France, they tell of ordinary lives inside buildings. Like a puzzle, human destinies, often solitary, fit together. In 2020, Chris Ware, flattered to receive an award for his work, declared: “In fact, I am amazed ! In the United States, comics are not even considered an art, even the ninth art… I tell you am so grateful to you, the French, for having this touch of madness, that of doing me such an honor, not to mention this generous openness to designers from all over the world thanks to which they show me their artistic friendship.
