The Belgian Comic Strip Center - Museum Brussels

As it prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary, the BCSC is delighted to welcome a very significant album, the work of a contemporary author about an author who stamped his personality and style on the comic strip world. What a great pleasure it is to delve into the world of René Goscinny through the words and illustrations of Catel.

Armed with information generously provided by Anne Goscinny, Catel charted the incredible, little-known life of a man and an author. The selection of storyboards displayed comprise both Catel’s original work and, thanks to the collaboration with the Goscinny Institute, René Goscinny’s early drawings. The BCSC is delighted to share these little gems with its visitors and, by the same token, celebrate the talent of two exceptional artists.

Mélanie Andrieu, Belgium Comic Strip Center

Both a work of art and the token of a beautiful friendship, this extraordinary album tells René Goscinny’s story in cartoon format, for the first time in Goscinny’s own words. It took the famous illustrator Catel four years, guided by the support and friendship of Anne Goscinny, to piece together the life of René Goscinny: his birth in Paris in the 1920s into a Jewish family exiled from Poland and Ukraine. His father, a chemist and son of a Rabbi. His mother, born in Ukraine before fleeing from the pogroms. His grandfather, a printer of Yiddish newspapers. His big brother Claude, the humourist. His childhood in Argentina and his love of drawing, laughing and writing.

At times powerful, at times tender, alternating episodes from René’s life with those told by his daughter Anne, a novelist, Catel traces the journey of a family marked by history, between America and Europe. As the young René was seeking his way in life, members of his family were dying in the concentration camps. René set off for New York, living in poverty with his mother, drawing and knocking on all the doors. First in Brussels then in Paris he gradually began to find his vocation, not as an illustrator but as a writer of scripts, comic sketches and stories.  With Uderzo, Goscinny created the character of Asterix which very quickly became famous the world over. He also created Little Nicolas with Sempé and was the great scriptwriter of Lucky Luke and Iznogoud.

Catel Muller, known as Catel, is the author of famous – often award-winning – graphic novels which have been translated in many countries. They include Kiki de Montparnasse, Olympe de Gouges, Benoîte Groult and Joséphine Baker.

Les Éditions Grasset

With the support of the Bruxelles-Capitale region