GIBRAT - Lot 12

GIBRAT JEAN-PIERRE GIBRAT MATTÉO Sixième époque (1939-1940) (T.6), Futuropolis 2022 Original plate no. 51, with preparatory pencil sketch for the first unpublished version of panel 7. Signed. Watercolor and acrylic inks on paper 35.8 × 48.4 cm (14.09 × 19.06 in.) These are the elements of the romances that punctuate the great war stories, from Passage du Rhin (André Cayatte, 1960) to La Grande Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) or The Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa, 1954). The young man and the young man, the young girl... Mattéo and Louis, wounded in the knee, have been taken in by a family. On this plate, after an impeccable midnight-blue frontispiece, a strip is devoted to Mattéo's account to Louis of his very first years with Juliette, in the days of swings and knights - the complicity of a father and son talking about the mother. After a cigarette is lit, the last strip features the young girl of the house - she looks like the younger sister of Jean-Pierre Gibrat's classic heroines. No doubt her single braid falling over her shoulder is a sign of her purity. Before leaving with Mattéo towards their destiny, Louis exchanges a fiery kiss with the young girl, prompting his father to reflect: "And to think he had everything to stay."