Sleeve of 13 various comics Postcards

Enki Bilal

Enki Bilal was born in October 1951, in Belgrade, in a country just emerging from the horrors of Nazism and already sinking into the delusions of an uncompromising Marshal obeying only himself. Bilal's father was indeed the tailor for Tito for several years. But the family dreams only of leaving this country that closes in on itself day by day. In the meantime, young Enes (his real name, Enki is just a diminutive) acts in a film about the adventures of two gangs of kids.

In 1960, finally, the family arrives in Paris, and the discovery of a new life and a new language ensues, which young Enki quickly masters, topping the French classes. Yet his passion lies elsewhere, already, in the drawings he produces daily from adolescence.

In 1971, he starts working for Pilote, at 20 years old. After a brief stint at the Beaux-Arts, he publishes "Le Bol Maudit" (The Cursed Bowl), still in Pilote. It's in the offices of the magazine that he meets Pierre Christin, creator of Valérian with Mezières. Many legendary albums are born from this encounter, including the first, "La Croisières des Oubliés" (The Cruise of the Forgotten), in 1975, and "Les Phalanges de l'Ordre Noir" (The Phalanges of the Black Order), in 1979, which meets enormous success, wins the RTL Prize for Adult Comics Album, and is the first comic to enter the Lire magazine's (edited by Bernard Pivot) rankings.

From 1980, Bilal begins the publication of the Nikopol trilogy ("La Foire aux Immortels" - The Carnival of Immortals, "La Femme Piège" - The Woman Trap, "Froid Equateur" - Cold Equator), of which he is both the artist and the writer. He continues his collaborations with other scriptwriters and draws the poster for "Mon Oncle d'Amérique" (My American Uncle) by Resnais, dedicated to Professor Laborit's work on the triune brain theory.

1983 is marked by the release of "Partie de Chasse" (The Hunting Party), still with Christin, which, 6 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, perfectly foreshadows the decline of the communist system and its imminent demise. Bilal's talent is expressed extraordinarily in this album, which is the perfect meeting of his style and a story perfectly in line with it. Not only are all of Bilal's obsessions present, but his purely artistic choices are reinforced in this album by the narrative. Thus, if since the beginning of his career, Bilal has essentially used color as an emotional vector and not just as a tool to stick to the chromatic reality of his subject matter, "Partie de Chasse" highlights this even more clearly and brings Bilal to the peak of his career.

In 1987, Bilal won the First Prize at the now-famous Angoulême Festival before embarking on exhibitions, notably at the Palais de Tokyo. He then achieved the feat, in a country where people like to classify others, of breaking free from the comic book category to join a larger circle, that of artists. And he is the first comic book artist to do so. The late 80s also marked his foray into cinema with the production of "Bunker Palace Hôtel", while at the same time Les Humanoïdes Associés reissued all of his works.

He continues to explore new horizons by creating sets and costumes for "Roméo et Juliette" after Prokoviev, choreographed by Angelin Prejocaj.

In 1993, he completed the Nikopol trilogy with "Froid Equateur" (Cold Equator), which was crowned by Lire as the best work of the year in all categories. The following year, "Bleu Sang" (Blue Blood) left a lasting impression with the impossible love story of Jill and Nikopol, Bilal's emblematic couple. The significant use of gouache for this album marks a turning point in the artist's work.

A postage stamp on the theme of integration and the Monster Tetralogy ("Le Sommeil du Monstre" - The Monster's Sleep, "32 Décembre" - 32 December, "Rendez-vous à Paris" - Rendezvous in Paris, "Quatre?" - Four?) occupied the 2000s, as did the release of "Immortal Ad Vitam", his third film which, between CGI and classical cinema, finds an improbable yet very striking place in today's cinema. Bilal's universe is masterfully rendered, as is the haunting recurrence of mutation (a theme dear to the author).

In 2009, Bilal offers us "Animal'z," a futuristic album where Earth has decided to take revenge on its inhabitants who have mistreated it for too long, and where a few people set out in search of an Eldorado where the reconstruction of a more balanced system has already begun...

Always ahead of history, Bilal offers us, once again, a vision of a not-so-distant future. Returning to charcoal and the simplicity of a few colors, he once again finds the right tone, just as accurate.

In May 2011, continuing in the vein of the previous album, he offers us "Julia & Roem." In a post-apocalyptic world, where human organization slowly resumes, Bilal takes us in the wake of a former military chaplain, who behind the wheel of an electric Ferrari, travels through the desert that the Baltic Sea has become. The self-referential nature of Shakespeare's work (the characters are not fooled by the path they follow), the starkness of brown landscapes (the color of these deserts that have covered the planet), the obsession with gaze, the close-ups of faces that suddenly remove everything in this new opus that is not human... Bilal continues this return started with Animal'Z towards simplified drawing and fragmented narration.

In 2013, the comic book author reaches a new milestone that leads him, on the one hand, to exhibit at the Louvre, with a series of drawings made from photos taken by Bilal at the heart of the Louvre. He accompanies these visuals with stories, alternately touching, hilarious, and full of madness, where he pays homage to both the great artists of the past and the anonymous stories of art.
On the other hand, for an exceptional auction, he creates paintings (the Oxymore series) that are, for the first time, not linked to any comic book. Bilal, the comic book artist, has freed himself from the album and has opened a new path, crowned with success.

A new exhibition, "Mécanhumanimal," at the Musée des Arts et Métiers, until January 2014, offers the artist the opportunity to explore a path dear to him, the mix of organic and mechanical. Mutation, long at the heart of Bilal's work, finds exceptional illumination through some of the works exhibited. True to his blues, he highlights human creation and revisits the genius of man as a creator of machines, before the trap of over-mechanization comes to disrupt human evolution itself.

In 2014, on the occasion of the release of "La Couleur de l'Air," the latest installment belonging to the series begun with Animal'z, Bilal exhibits at the Hôtel des Arts in Toulon. Between gouaches from the early years, overlays from the Blue Blood period, and stripped-down work on the latest albums, it's an astonishing perspective on the artist's work that is offered to Varois enthusiasts, who eagerly flock to discover the extraordinary work of this visionary!

© Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES

Read more