The death of French adventure painter "Le Petit Nicolas" Jean-Jacques Sempé

Paris - (AFP) - The French painter Jean-Jacques Sempé, who was famous for his graphic embodiment of the adventures of "Le Petit Nicolas" and his journalistic caricatures, died Thursday, at the age of 89, according to what his wife, Martine Jussieu Sempé, told Agence France-Presse. .

"The humorist Jean-Jacques Sempé passed away peacefully on the evening (Thursday) 11 August (2022), at the age of eighty-nine, in his holiday residence, surrounded by his wife and close friends," his friend and biographer Marc Lecarpantier told AFP.

Since the fifties of the twentieth century, Sambih has had comic illustrations in "The New Yorker", "Paris Match" and "Express" magazines, and he was one of the most prominent illustrators that "The New Yorker" dealt with, as he drew about a hundred of the magazine's covers.

The painter, born in 1932 in Pessac, near Bordeaux, has about 12 volumes, including “Saint-Tropez” and “Two So Complex”, but the most prominent of them is the adventures of “Petit Nicolas” for children, of which about 15 million copies are sold today.

Since publishing, with René Goscinny, Le Petit Nicolas in 1959, Sempey has published approximately one volume a year, and about a hundred of his illustrations have appeared on the front pages of newspapers.