On the death of Jean-Jacques Sempé: drawings with melancholy and irony

He is one of the most famous draftsmen in France. Jean-Jacques Sempé drew his figures with elegant strokes, often with ironic ambiguity. The inventor of “Little Nick” died at the age of 89.

Jean-Jacques Sempé never considered himself a great artist. In fact, he doesn’t even know how to draw. In one of his last interviews, he had offered the journalist an invitation to dinner if he could explain.

Actually, Sempé would have preferred to become a professional soccer player. Or musicians. Sempé loved music, he admired artists like Débussy, Ravel and especially Duke Ellington.

Playing the piano with Ellington

On the FranceMusique radio station, Sempé recounted his encounter with Ellington in a friend’s house: “It was very dark in the room, there was nobody but me. I sat down at the piano and played a bit – until I heard a voice behind me that said said: Not so bad. Not so bad. And then he said: I play the left hand and you play the right hand. And then we played one of his songs. It was one of the best days of my life.”

Nevertheless, Sempé has become famous – as one of the most well-known draftsmen in France.

Figures that face everyday life

To be a humorist and to be seen as such – that was important to Sempé. In his works he commented – if at all, then only extremely rarely – on world events. Rather, he wanted to represent the timeless.

Sempé’s drawings show figures who face the everyday challenges of being human. He drew them with fine and elegant strokes, often with ironic ambiguity. But always with empathy and with a perfectionist claim:

“Little Nick” – created with Asterix inventor Goscinny

In 1932 he was born as an illegitimate child in Pessac near Bordeaux. There was a lot of arguments between the mother and the stepfather, with flying dishes and loud mutual accusations. Sempé’s probably most famous series Le Petit Nicholas, “Little Nick”, is an alternative to this reality.

“Little Nick” was created together with Asterix inventor René Goscinny, with whom Sempé was a close friend. In it, both tell the adventures of Nicolas and his friends in France in the 1950s and 1960s.

Sempé himself would hardly have thought it possible that “Der Kleine Nick” would be translated into 30 languages ​​and sell almost eight million copies. And certainly not that he would draw more than 100 covers for the legendary magazine “The New Yorker”.

Piano lessons and hard work

But Sempé also kept his love of music well into old age and still took piano lessons. He told the broadcaster FranceMusique why – with a wink.

The draftsman Sempé always worked hard on himself. Because for him it took a certain bravery to draw, just as it took bravery to be human.

In his drawings, however, he gave humanity a simple, melancholy elegance and ironic lightness. Because Sempé himself said: His characters are not small – the world is big.