Pigment print signed by Enki Bilal: The Sleep of the Monster

BILAL Enki

Enki, born Enes BILAL was born in Belgrade, in the former Yugoslavia. But it was in Paris, where he joined his entire family in 1960, that his passion for drawing was born. At the age of 20, he took his first steps to Pilote, a comic book magazine that allowed the emergence of a whole generation of cartoonists. There he met Pierre Christin<, writer of Valérian de Mézières, with whom he created his first large comics, notably Les Phalanges de l'Ordre noir (1979) and La Partie de Chasse (1983). Although he still collaborated with others, Bilal assumed, from the 1980s, both the drawing and the writing of his works, as for example for the Nikopol Trilogy. At the same time, he ventured into the cinema for the first time and directed Bunker Palace Hotel. The 90’s of Bilal are full of romanticism, coupled, technically, with a generous use of gouache. His style is strongly impacted. The Monster’s Tetralogy occupies the 2000s, as does his film Immortal Ad Vitam, which represents, on the cinema side, a kind of culmination of his work (both narrative and visual). Impacted by the decay of the planet, he begins, through Animal'z, an ecological cycle in his talk and very refined in his form. He is the first comic book artist whose works are auctioned off at a high price, thus making him the link between comic books and modern art.

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