“They are crazy, these museums. You could almost hear Obelix thinking out loud. He would say it with a smile, happy, even proud, to see one of his dads honored with an exhibition in a Parisian institution. Like a nice wink symbolizing the enthronement of this giant of popular culture in the artistic elite, a drawing signed Albert Uderzo, diverting the famous "Vitruvian Man" from the great Leonardo da Vinci, has flourished in recent days on the facade of the Maillol museum (Paris, 7th century). It announces one of the spring events of deconfined culture: except for a health earthquake, “Uderzo, like a magic potion” will take place from May 27 to September 30 at the Maillol museum (Paris, 7th arrondissement).
Disappeared on March 24, 2020 at the age of 92, in the anxiety-provoking hubbub of a first confinement which did not offer him a media outlet at the height of his character, Albert Uderzo has never run after the light or the honors, preferring to Parisian salons the tranquility of a family life, to television sets the intensity of a working life.
To read alsoBD: "Asterix and the Griffon", 39th adventure of the saga, will be released on October 21
It is this life and this work that the exhibition - teeming with 300 plates, covers, drawings and personal effects - will propose to make the public (re) discover, from A to Z. Or rather from Z like Zartan, one of his first heroes of youth, to A for Asterix, one of the major cultural phenomena of the post-war period in France, of which he is the co-creator with René Goscinny, his screenwriter friend who died too quickly, in 1977 at the age of 51 years old.
380 million Asterix albums sold worldwide
"Albert did not measure the reality of his career, the incredible arc that had allowed him to start from a zero point to reach the stars", jointly underline the artist's daughter, Sylvie, and the woman of his life, Ada, which served as a model for the character of Falbala. “Finding ourselves with his drawings, with his characters and with his famous signature, we wondered what he would have liked us to do. Paying tribute to his formidable career seemed to us very quickly to be an obligation, a need, a necessity. Like a magic potion. "
Uderzo himself had a magical passion.
The one who was going to transform this child of the bubble, who fell into the pot of drawing when very young, at 7, by discovering the adventures of Mickey in Le Parisien libéré, into a master of the 9th Art with 380 million albums sold worldwide, just for "Asterix".
The little Gaul, of course, will have pride of place in the exhibition, notably through original boards.
Asterix, Obelix and Dogmatix, to whom Uderzo owes its notoriety, will naturally be at the center of this exhibition.
DR
But the other heroes of his life will also be largely part of the game: the Indian precursor Oumpah-Pah, a mixture of the malice of Asterix and the strength of Obelix, Tanguy and Laverdure who allowed him to sketch the aeronautical exploits of the Knights. from the sky, the rogue Clopinard, the muscular Prince Rollin and even, more surprisingly, a certain… Captain Marvel junior.
"Offer a special moment with my father"
Embellished with unpublished documents sometimes coming straight from the maestro's office, the exhibition will draw the itinerary of a son of Italian immigrants (Romans, therefore!) Who, alongside his friend from a Polish Jewish family, will give birth of the most popular Gallic heroes of French comics.
A genius draftsman, with an expressive line, a brush always in motion.
A man of character who, at the dawn of the 1980s, after two years of mourning his old friend Goscinny, will take over alone the torch of "Asterix", against all odds, offering his character even more titanic sales and his fans a dozen new albums. “This exhibition is a way of paying him a double tribute. To the immense artist and to a wonderful man, ”breathes his wife, Ada. "The idea is to offer my father's readers a privileged moment with him," insists Sylvie Uderzo. He kept telling us that he owed everything to his audience. »A public invited to discover, finally, the recipe for his own magic potion.