Robe Rouge, 2022

Jean-Claude Götting  

Born in Paris in 1963, Jean-Claude Götting owes his celebrity to the Harry Potter phenomenon, having created the magical covers for the French editions of JK Rowling's cult novels. He began his career in the applied arts by creating comic strips for the fanzine PLGPPUR (Plein la gueule pour pas un rond).

In 1985, Götting published Crève-cœur with Futuropolis, a piece of aesthetic dynamite awarded the prize for best first album at the Angoulême Festival. Götting revolutionised the black and white medium, enriching the inking with gouache applied with a foam roller in order to produce interesting mottled effects and introduce light into the drawing, simultaneously creating relief and atmosphere. These magical drawing effects were to be one of the hallmarks of the avant-garde in the French 9th Art, leading to titles of extraordinary graphic power such as Détours, La Serviette noire, La Fille du modèle and L'Option Stravinsky.

Götting then changed tack and began working as an illustrator and painter, and focusing on children's books, continuing to surprise his viewers through his use of bright colours. As a newspaper illustrator, he worked most notably for The New Yorker, Libération and Le Nouvel Observateur. He was also exhibiting paintings in Paris and Geneva before bursting back on to the comic strip scene in 2004 with La Malle Sanderson, which immediately won prizes in Geneva and Monaco.

An exacting artist and pioneer of comic strip impressionism, this drawing wizard has also produced some extraordinary female portraits in both black and white and colour. Rendered in dominant tones of red and blue, his models have a melancholy beauty imbued with supreme elegance and sensitivity.