The new exhibition at the Parisian museum, which begins on Friday, traces the encounter imagined by Émile Bravo between the Belgian hero and the German Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum, victim of this genocide.
What if Spirou had lived through the Shoah? The new exhibition at the Shoah Memorial in Paris, which begins on Friday, retraces the meeting imagined by the cartoonist Emile Bravo between the Belgian hero and the German Jewish painter Felix Nussbaum, a real victim of this genocide.
The exhibition “Spirou in the turmoil of the Shoah” is built around the work of Emile Bravo, published in May, Spirou. Hope despite everything which sees the legendary groom through World War II.
Throughout the course, the plates of the French author, accompanied by photographs and personal objects of deportees, form an extension of the work, which reveals more about the life of one of the protagonists: Felix Nussbaum, painter of the New Objectivity.
A “particular Spirou”
Félix Nussbaum, a German Jew, lived clandestinely in Belgium with his wife Felka Platek during the Occupation, before being murdered in Auschwitz in 1944. Before his death, he depicted anguish and violence in his paintings, some exhibited for the occasion at the Memorial.
“When I discovered Felix Nussbaum, I understood that it was him. That it was thanks to this painter that I was going to be able to talk about the Shoah”, explains Emile Bravo.
Bravo’s Spirou is a “particular Spirou”, rooted in the reality of the Second World War rather than in the fictional, sometimes even fantastic, adventures of the Belgian hero, says Didier Pasamonik, curator of the exhibition.
“I try to make intergenerational comics”
Created in 1938, Spirou is initially presented as a bellboy in a hotel, but this profession is eventually put aside and rarely mentioned in the drawings dating after 1947.
“As between 1938 and 1947 there is war, and unfortunately it often takes trauma for spirits to awaken, I imagined that Spirou understood life by living this terrible time”, reveals the designer.
Despite the dark subject of the exhibition, the bright colors of the walls and illustrations soothe this violence to offer an exhibition accessible to the youngest who can follow an adapted route.
“I address children and their parents. I try to make intergenerational comics”, explains Emile Bravo.
According to the author, “one must become aware from an early age” of History, as he himself did through the experience of his father, a Spanish republican who experienced internment camps South of France.