Gus Bofa

Gus Bofa , of its true name Gustave Blanchot , born the May 23rd 1883 with Brive-the-Strapping woman and deceased in 1968 with Aubagne is a French illustrator.

Life

Wire of colonel Blanchot of which it is 11th and penultimate child, it passes his childhood to Bordeaux then moves with Paris (his/her father is named military commander of the Senate) where it is registered with the Henri-Iv college, establishment where it meets André Dunoyer de Segonzac and Maurice Constantin-Weyer which will remain his/her closest friends. It is at 8 years the early age that it finds its name of artist, Gus Bofa .

After a few years as engineer it launches out in the poster and takes part in Rire then Sourire and the small week. It draws also costumes and decorations for the theater. During the First World War it composes the covers of stores the bayonet. Between the two wars he collaborates in monthly magazine the crapouillot.

His/her friend Pierre Mac Orlan said of him: “Gus Bofa is before a whole writer who chose the drawing to achieve his goals. A text of Bofa, a drawing of Bofa are built in the same matter and one and the other is animated of this same ray of humorous poetry which includes/understands all that holds a place between the life and death. ” It is intended for the military career but gives up it at the time of presenting the contest of Saint-Cyr military school. To gain a little money, it begins, since 1900, to sell drawings with the newspapers illustrated like the Smile , the Laughter or the Nice smile .

After its military service, and some uses of office without interest, it creates, about 1906, the Gus-Bofa Posters. Extremely of its success of poster artist, he writes tales for the press, of the reviews for the variety and holds the theatrical chronicle of the Rire then Sourire , newspapers which he briefly directs and where he makes begin Pierre Mac Orlan.

Very seriously wounded with the legs in December 1914, he refuses to be amputee and, of his bed of hospital, sends drawings to the Bayonet .

The shortly after this war, which left it disabled person, it starts, thorough by Mac Orlan, a career of illustrator of books of luxury. It puts thus in image Mac Orlan, Courteline, Swift, Voltaire, De Quincey or Cervantès. In parallel, it publishes personal albums as the Book of the one hundred year old war or At the doctors .

Founder and director of the Living room of the Spider which wants to give a space of freedom to the draftsmen and to push them with a more personal art, Bofa also deals with the literary chronicle of the Crapouillot , magazine literary and artistic, which it will hold until in 1939.

With the Years 1930, its work takes an increasingly personal and haunted turn. Malaises describes the existential anguish and the Symphony of the fear proposes the fear like engine of the human history. Zoo introduces the man like a denatured animal.

The Années 1950 mark the end of the de luxe edition and, for Bofa, the beginning of the lapse of memory. Indifferent to glory, it deepens, through autobiographical books, of which it signs texts and images, like the free Track , Déblais or dubious Cruising , a disillusioned and pessimistic reflection on the human condition.

He dies in 1968, with Aubagne.

References

Internal bonds

the illustrator and caricaturist Georges Goursat says SEM
Jean Bruller, known as Vercors, which was an illustrator before being a writer and whose drawing must much in Bofa.

External bonds

Official site
Editions Acharnistes

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