AMERICAN CHRIS WARE GETS

THE GRAND PRIX OF THE CITY OF ANGOULEME 2021

The American Chris Ware, undisputed master of the American comic strip, won Wednesday the most prestigious award in comics, the Grand Prix de la Ville d'Angoulême 2021, awarded despite the cancellation of the public events of the famous Festival. international comic strip.

The Angoulême Festival announces it this Wednesday morning, the American cartoonist therefore takes over from the Frenchman Emmanuel Guibert, hoping that “his edition”, next January, will take place under normal conditions. The Chris Ware Grand Prix in Angoulême is a consecration but the author has already been crowned in Charente. In 2003, the American cartoonist , who became cult in the 1990s, received Alph'Art for best album and ACBD's critics' prize for Jimmy Corrigan, his major work. Two distinctions that complete a rich list of 28 Eisner prizes and 22 Harvey prizes in the United States. The author of "Jimmy Corrigan" and "Rusty Brown", 53, sees therefore crowned the whole of a career where he affirmed an immediately recognizable style in the "comic strip".

The genius of Chris Ware, born in 1967 in Omaha, United States, is noticed while still a student. His drawings then appeared in a local newspaper in Texas, where he continued his studies. Famous comic book author Art Spiegelman (Maus) spots them and begins publishing them in the RAW journal he runs. From the early 1990s, Chris Ware became a leading comic book author, with in particular the adventures, first published in the press, of his now cult character Jimmy Corrigan.

In 2012, he published “Building Stories”, a book-object made up of fifteen books of various formats that can be read in an order chosen by the reader - this last book received the Special Jury Prize at the Angoulême Festival in 2013.

Minimalist and precise drawing

Relatively little known to the general public in France, Chris Ware is the author of a very rich, not fully translated work, known to comics fans for his attention to the tiniest detail of ordinary lives. He tackles it with a minimalist and precise design, with soft angles and solid colors, where the characters take reassuring round shapes.

Chris Ware has appropriated over the years the codes and the language of comics to divert them in his own way, with great freedom of narration. The construction of the pages respect a real geometry with boxes and a minimalist design of a wide variety of sizes and an impressive precision.

“For 25 years, it is thus an original work, which oscillates between a sweet melancholy and a deep sadness, that Chris Ware offers, always endeavoring to look under the microscope the daily life of his characters and their most ridiculous gestures. "