Born in 1932
Jean-Jacques Sempé was born in Bordeaux in 1932. Having been expelled from college, he failed to pass entrance examinations for the Post Office, a bank and the French Railways.
Became an Artist
in Paris
Determined to be an artist in Paris, Sempé was elected to do his national service there. In 1952 he received an award to encourage young artists to turn professional. Thus began a career spanning so far more than half a century.
“Famous in the English-speaking world for his instantly recognisable New Yorker covers, Sempé is known and loved worldwide, with more than 30 collections of drawings published in 30 countries. His inimitable style and flair for satire and tragic-comic vision place him on a par with the American cartoonist James Thurber. Like every great artist, Sempé has created a world above and beyond specific cultural and political realities, a world populated by psychoanalysts, housewives, concert pianists, baffled lovers, dreamy married couples, long-faced, aquiline-nosed depressives who yearn to meet their maker in an unyielding, disinterested universe.” Miles Kington