Entitled “Catherine Meurisse.
Une place à soi", in a nod to the work of Virginia Woolf, the exhibition opens on Friday in Strasbourg at the Tomi Ungerer Museum-International Center for Illustration as part of Illustration Encounters highlighting the female artists.
Opportunity to return to the career of this mischievous 43-year-old artist and her relationship to the arts and nature.
Catherine Meurisse
"is an illustrator who has already made a name for herself, a bit of a figurehead for this event which tends to give visibility to these illustrators",
explained to AFP Morgane Magnin, curator of this exhibition which will take place. runs until September 3.
First female press cartoonist to join the editorial staff of
Charlie Hebdo
at the age of 25, she has now left press cartooning and produces colourful, poetic and humorous illustrations for magazines such as
Zadig
or
Philosophie magazine
, while publishing her own scrapbooks.
“At Charlie, we drew like crazy every day, today my drawing is slowing down
,” she explained at the opening, the first comic book author to have been elected to the Academy of Fine Arts.
How did you find your place in a very masculine environment?
I did not necessarily have a very precise idea of what I wanted to do, I first studied literature before enrolling in two art schools in Paris, the Estienne school and the Arts Déco. .
It was when I left these schools that I discovered press cartoons and entered
Charlie Hebdo
, where I worked for a little over ten years.
They are the ones who came to get me, I don't think I would have dared to knock on
Charlie 's door
, I was much too shy for that... When I entered, I remember jumping for joy, saying to myself: there, I have my job!
It was the first time that I felt there was a place to be made and I made it.
It was easy because there was a benevolent atmosphere, intelligent, open, pedagogical people.
Tignous, Cabu were delighted that a woman was coming, they didn't understand why there weren't more women in press cartoons.
With your works like
Mes Hommes de lettres
or
Le Pont des arts
, do you try to build bridges between artists, writers and your readers?
I'm making this bridge first for me.
I bring together all these artists and these great writers, some of whom impress me, so that they stop scaring me.
I also bring them together because I love them deeply, I pay homage to them.
Often I don't care but it's also a way of declaring my love to them.
I absolutely need to nourish myself with all the arts, it's really what makes me stand up.
What is your connection to nature, another strong theme in your work?
I grew up in the countryside in the west of France.
The old dry stone walls, the trees, the seasons... All of this has been familiar to me since I was a child and I think it has really forged a state of mind, a sense of observation that is at the heart of my profession and which still serves me.
Observation is like gymnastics, you have to practice it: you should never lose sight of yourself!
Today, unfortunately, the connection with nature is too often broken.
I live in town but as soon as I find this link I feel that my life is increased.
My life, my sight, my senses, everything is enhanced and it makes me want to continue drawing.
Why create a character in your image in
La Légèreté
?
La Légèreté
is closely linked to the attack on
Charlie Hebdo
.
After this collapse, in January 2015, I no longer knew who I was and I had to represent myself, draw myself, to prove to myself that I had not died with my friends.
The quest for beauty also appeared for vital reasons.
Even if
La Légèreté
is also an album where there is humor, I really took seriously everything that could give me life.
I also represent myself in the albums that followed:
Les Grands Espaces
and
La Jeune fille et la mer
.
These books form a trilogy which was not programmed but which follows my inner and personal journey.
Who am I after such a disaster?
Am I still able to draw?
Where I come from ?
In
Les Grands Espaces
, I talk about my childhood.
And with
The Young Girl and the Sea,
I wonder what I would save them before a natural disaster this time.
These three books evoke loss, the loss of people we love, of landscapes we love.
What are your plans today?
After meeting Charlie
's team
, I met another company, that of academicians and academicians and it's just as interesting, in another genre... In January, Emmanuel Guibert (cartoonist and scriptwriter of comic strips,
Editor's note
) was elected to the academy.
The two of us can represent comics even better.
What would be nice is to create a comic book grand prix.
There are many things to do and we have all the time because we have all the life!
