Jean-Jacques Sempé died on August 11, at the age of 89, in his second home near Bordeaux, the city of his childhood.
The cartoonist has marked several generations of readers of the press and his albums with the humor and poetry of his sketches.
He was one of the most prominent artists in The New Yorker, with around 100 covers between 1978 and 2019.
He remains for posterity the creator, with René Goscinny in 1959, of Petit Nicolas, a tender-hearted schoolboy whose adventures have become a classic of literature.
“You created Little Nicolas. You made all childhoods smile. Today you have found yourselves, I’m sure, and I hear you laughing to tears”, said Anne Goscinny during the funeral in the church of Saint -Germain des Pres.
“Sempé’s drawing, with his smile and his elegance, made us see life with less despair”, greeted the writer Benoît Duteurtre.
He paid tribute to “the craftsman who spent hours at the desk, (…) faithful to the tradition of humorous drawing with his rhythmic gags” but who also excelled “in large images” and “could be a landscaper “.
“He was a friend. Then, he’s someone who dug the emergency exits a bit in a reality that suffocates us a little, with a delicious humor and at the same time more meaningful than we think. He was someone with a deep lightness,” actor and director Jean-Michel Ribes told AFPTV.
Sempé was buried privately in the Montparnasse cemetery.
