Moebius - Lot 135

Moebius MOEBIUS Le Bandard fou Éditions du Fromage 1974 Original plate no. 7. Signed. India ink on paper 33.5 × 46 cm (13.19 × 18.11 in.) Le Bandard fou occupies a pivotal position in Moebius's work. The year was 1974, and two years earlier Gotlib, Mandryka and Bretécher had created "adult" comics with L'Écho des Savanes. Under the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing - who, having just been elected President of the Republic, announced the abolition of censorship - a whole generation of authors working for young people took advantage of this new opportunity. This was the moment when Jean Giraud, like Gotlib, began to explore the territories of desire, delirium and free drawing. Produced in a state of pure graphic improvisation, with no pre-established scenario, Le Bandard fou is a manifesto of automatic creation linked to the unconscious, in which Moebius perfects his "organic" language, where eroticism and spirituality merge. Behind the farce of the situations, we already perceive the central theme of the mystical Moebius: self-transformation. This album foreshadows Arzach and Le Garage hermétique, the masterpieces that the two-headed artist would create, alongside Blueberry, for Métal Hurlant.