Graying hair, the numbers “49.3” acting as a mustache… A mural depicting Emmanuel Macron as Adolf Hitler is not to the taste of the Avignon conurbation. “At the request of Joël Guin, president of the Greater Avignon urban community, and Violaine Démaret, prefect of Vaucluse, the services of Greater Avignon are mobilized to have the new fresco by the artist Lekto removed as soon as possible”, the agglomeration community said in a press release on Monday.
“Following the reactions and the growing controversy aroused by the new fresco located in the parking lot of the Italians in Avignon, the prefect of Vaucluse agreed with the president of Grand Avignon, owner of the premises, of its erasure”, abounded the prefecture.
The artist already prosecuted for another fresco
On this mural, made on an electrical transformer at the north-east entrance to Avignon, the message “No thank you” frames this portrait of Emmanuel Macron in large letters, while at the bottom left of the fresco, in smaller, is inscribed with the words: “if ever… satyrical painting”. This street-art work is signed by the graffiti artist Lekto, whose previous mural painted in the same place at the end of June had already been erased, at the request of the Vaucluse prefecture.
The economist Jacques Attali was represented there as a puppeteer manipulating an Emmanuel Macron-Pinocchio, which had aroused strong reactions on social networks where the anti-Semitic character of the fresco had been denounced. According ProvenceLekto’s trial before the Avignon Criminal Court for “public insult due to origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion, but also public provocation to discrimination” will take place on September 14.