Enki Bilal after Apocalypse

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

The auction house Artcurial is developing a vocation to participate actively in cultural events in Paris. Its exhibition rooms of the Hôtel Dassault, avenue des Champs-Elysées, meets particularly well such a trend.

Artcurial is also known for its prestige sales of albums, originals and artifacts of the Francophone comic strips from the origins to the most recent.

Enki Bilal is one of the masters of futurist strips. On 24 March 2007, Artcurial totaled € 1.3 million including premium on 32 of his drawings embellished with acrylic and pastel. The highest price, 177 K €, was recorded on a large drawing, 90 x 63 cm, made for the album Bleu Sang, showing a couple embracing.

The last album of Bilal, just published by Casterman, is titled Animal'z. This is a post-apocalyptic western showing the adventures of humans and animals that have survived the cataclysm. The author emphasizes the dynamism of the action by a quick drawing, this time without the use of acrylic.

Artcurial exhibits the 350 drawings constituting Animal'z until September 10. All of them will be auctioned on September 19. The highest price, 35 K€, is expected on the 38x28 cm drawing which was used for the cover. A man and a big cat are running in the same direction.

The collectors of original strip drawings go to great effort to collect the drawings that come on the unit on the market. Here they have everything at their disposal, in one shot. Will they welcome this initiative?

[Pierre Tavlitzki]

This very innovative sale realized 930 K € fees included. It had been well publicized. As expected, the cover drawing got the highest bid: 36.5 K € fees included.