The bodies of his women in black and white have fantasized thousands of readers.
The designer and painter Alex Varenne died Monday in Paris, his gallery owner announced on Wednesday.
Aged 81, he had established himself in twenty albums as one of the masters of eroticism in comics, like the Italian Milo Manara, in addition to "trash".
Initially a visual arts teacher, Alex Varenne became interested in comics from 1968, a period teeming with the emergence of new authors and magazines.
His first albums, already in black and white, he signed them in 1979 with his brother Daniel Varenne on the screenplay: "Ardeur" which, despite its title, has nothing erotic, is a postapocalyptic science fiction series, published in Charlie monthly.
His turn towards more sensual works will be under the leadership of the editor-in-chief of the magazine at the time, himself a great lover of the female body: “It was Wolinski who advised me to try my hand at the erotic genre. because he thought I drew women very well.
It suited my life well.
My first erotic album -
Carré noir sur dame blanche
- was released in 1984 and it immediately went very well, ”recounts Alex Varenne in an interview with his gallery owner.
Champion of sexual freedom
Esthete and libertine, the designer will dig this furrow with stories published in the Echo of the Savannas of the 1980s. First with the disturbing and sulphurous “Erma Jaguar”, the story of the meetings of a hermaphrodite who borrows the features of the singer Annie Lennox.
Then with "Body to body" (1987), "the Tears of sex" (1989) or even "Crazy loves" (1991).
About twenty albums in which the designer explores all the fantasies, often inspired by the confidences of women actually met.
Cantor of sexual freedom, Alex Varenne admitted regretting this period of the 1980s and 1990s, in a 2016 interview with the Monsieur Vintage website: “At the time, erotic comics were better received, displayed in the window and put forward.
Today, she is in retreat, we are in the midst of puritanism, the 1970s and sexual liberation is over.
Then AIDS came through.
It was after the pill and before AIDS, a very liberated sexuality that corresponded well to the comics that I was doing.
Eroticism is everywhere, advertising is erotic, but an erotic comic must be wrapped in cellophane.
There is also self-censorship on the part of booksellers.
But for me, it was more to draw women than to do erotic comics.
The artist leaves a work which is entirely dedicated to them.
Body and soul.