A graffiti artist prosecuted for having painted a fresco in Avignon representing the economist Jacques Attali as a puppeteer who manipulates an Emmanuel Macron-Pinocchio, was acquitted Thursday by the criminal court.
The street artist, known as Lekto, was on trial for “public insult on grounds of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion” and for “provoking discrimination on grounds of origin, ethnicity, nation, race or religion. The court acquitted him of these two charges, although the prosecution had requested a fine of 6,000 euros against him, including 2,000 suspended, during the hearing on September 14.
Deleted 72 hours later
The prosecution and the International League against Racism and Anti-Semitism (Licra), which had filed a civil suit, have 10 days to appeal, recalled the president of the court. The graffiti artist, aged 32, created this mural in June 2022 on an electrical transformer at the northeast entrance to Avignon. It immediately sparked controversy, before being deleted 72 hours later at the initiative of the prefecture and the urban community.
Jacques Attali had filed a complaint. Depicting Jacques Attali, who is Jewish, as a Geppetto with a disturbing look manipulating like a puppet an Emmanuel Macron caricatured as Pinocchio, the painting took up the anti-Semitic iconography of the interwar period, according to its detractors.
In April, another fresco by the same artist representing Emmanuel Macron, with features reminiscent of the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler with the number “49.3” written as a mustache, in reference to the article of the Constitution used to pass the reform of the retirements in the National Assembly, had also created controversy before being also quickly erased.