Several hundred people saluted the memory of the designer at his funeral this Friday in Paris.
Some 300 people attended this Friday in Paris the funeral of designer Jean-Jacques Sempé, known as Sempé, who died on August 11 at the age of 89, in his second home near Bordeaux, the city of his childhood. He was hailed by Anne Goscinny, the daughter of his collaborator and friend, as the one who made everyone smile.
The cartoonist has marked several generations of readers of the press and his albums with the humor and poetry of his sketches. He was one of the most prominent artists in the New Yorkerfor which he signed a hundred covers between 1978 and 2019.
“You made all childhoods smile”
He remains for posterity the creator, with René Goscinny in 1959, of the Little Nicholasa tender-hearted schoolboy whose adventures have become a classic of children’s literature.
“You created Little Nicolas. You made all childhoods smile. Today you have found yourselves, I’m sure, and I hear you laughing to tears”, said Anne Goscinny during the funeral in the church of Saint -Germain des Pres.
A man “with deep lightness”
“Sempé’s drawing, with his smile and his elegance, made us see life with less despair”, greeted the writer Benoît Duteurtre. He paid tribute to “the craftsman who spent hours at the desk, (…) faithful to the tradition of humorous drawing with his rhythmic gags” but who also excelled “in large images” and “could be a landscaper “.
“He was a friend. Then, he is someone who dug a little the emergency exits in a reality that suffocates us a little, with a delicious humor and at the same time more significant than we think. He was someone with a deep lightness,” actor and director Jean-Michel Ribes told AFPTV.