Jan Bosschaert
Encyclopedia
Jan Bosschaert is a Belgian
comics
artist, painter and illustrator, best known for the comic series Sam and Jaguar, and his illustrations for the books of Marc De Bel.
in Flanders
in 1957. He is raised in Wijnegem
, close to the forest, in a house with a large garden. He spends most of his free time drawing. He made his first comic when he was about 10, and continued in the next years with comics in different genres, ranging from Sherlock Holmes
stories to his own version of Lucky Luke
. One of his comics, about two senior scouts, he shows to established comics creator Eddy Ryssack, whose main advice is to make sure everything is well documented. He gets to know and love the work of André Franquin
as well when he is 14, at a comics fair in Brussels.
His puberty is a rather unhappy period, where Bosschaert withdraws into his own world and into music. He listens to artists like Tom Waits
or Jackson Browne
, but keeps on drawing. When he is 18 years old, he goes on a visit to Pom, a comics author in Gazet Van Antwerpen
. Seeing the poverty the author lives in is quite a shock, but it doesn't stop him of becoming an artist himself.
When he studies at the Sint-Lukasinstituut, the Art Academy of Brussels, he gets to know the work of illustrator Ever Meulen
, a former student of the same school, which will greatly influence him. Another great influence is the discovery of Arzach, the textless comic by Moebius
. Influences outside the world of comics come from the dominant styles of his youth, Punk
and New Wave music
.
Bosschaert publishes his first work in (À Suivre
), and produces his first published comic album in 1982 with Ikarus, but gets his first breakthrough with the satirical Pest in 't Paleis (Pest in the Palace), which appears in HUMO
in 1983. It's a parody of the Belgian royal family and major politicians, and becomes a succès de scandale
. But Bosschaert stops making comics and works for the rest of the decade primarily as an illustrator for different magazines, including Playboy
, and authors like Hugo Claus
. His main illustrative work appears first in publications of the Flemish television VRT
, and later in publications of publisher Altiora and popular children's book author Marc De Bel, whom he considers as a kindred spirit and an older brother.
He also continues to make paintings, mainly female nudes and erotic works. Bosschaert is a purely figurative painter, who prefers clarity over concepts.
His first longer running comic series starts in 1990, with stories by Marc Legendre. Sam tells the adventures of an adolescent girl working in a small garage. The series stops after 8 albums though, and translations are unsuccessful. While Bosschaert tries to limit his purely commercial work to a few jobs a year, he makes an exception for people he feels connected to. He creates King Kong Kooks as a catalogue annex comic for fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck
.
More international recognition follows from 2001 on, when he collaborators with comics author Jean Dufaux
on Jaguar, a fantasy
series published by Casterman
and translated in French and Spanish. Local success in Flanders comes when he collaborates with comedian Urbanus
on De Geverniste Vernepelingskes, a series which parodies famous Belgians, including the two authors.
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
comics
Comics
Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...
artist, painter and illustrator, best known for the comic series Sam and Jaguar, and his illustrations for the books of Marc De Bel.
Biography
Jan Bosschaert was born in BorgerhoutBorgerhout
Borgerhout is a district of the municipality and city of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. The district houses 41,614 inhabitants reflecting 90 nationalities...
in Flanders
Flanders
Flanders is the community of the Flemings but also one of the institutions in Belgium, and a geographical region located in parts of present-day Belgium, France and the Netherlands. "Flanders" can also refer to the northern part of Belgium that contains Brussels, Bruges, Ghent and Antwerp...
in 1957. He is raised in Wijnegem
Wijnegem
Wijnegem is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality only comprises the town of Wijnegem proper. WIjnegem is one of the most expensive municipality of the Flanders. On January 1, 2006 Wijnegem had a total population of 8,816. The total area is 7.86 km² which gives...
, close to the forest, in a house with a large garden. He spends most of his free time drawing. He made his first comic when he was about 10, and continued in the next years with comics in different genres, ranging from Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...
stories to his own version of Lucky Luke
Lucky Luke
Lucky Luke is a Belgian comics series created by Belgian cartoonist, Maurice De Bevere better known as Morris, the original artist, and was for one period written by René Goscinny...
. One of his comics, about two senior scouts, he shows to established comics creator Eddy Ryssack, whose main advice is to make sure everything is well documented. He gets to know and love the work of André Franquin
André Franquin
André Franquin was an influential Belgian comics artist, whose best known comic strip creations are Gaston and Marsupilami, created while he worked on the Spirou et Fantasio comic strip from 1947 to 1969, during a period seen by many as the series' golden age.-Franquin's beginnings:Franquin was...
as well when he is 14, at a comics fair in Brussels.
His puberty is a rather unhappy period, where Bosschaert withdraws into his own world and into music. He listens to artists like Tom Waits
Tom Waits
Thomas Alan "Tom" Waits is an American singer-songwriter, composer, and actor. Waits has a distinctive voice, described by critic Daniel Durchholz as sounding "like it was soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car."...
or Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....
, but keeps on drawing. When he is 18 years old, he goes on a visit to Pom, a comics author in Gazet Van Antwerpen
Gazet van Antwerpen
The Gazet van Antwerpen is a Belgian newspaper in Antwerp and Flanders, published by Concentra.-History:...
. Seeing the poverty the author lives in is quite a shock, but it doesn't stop him of becoming an artist himself.
When he studies at the Sint-Lukasinstituut, the Art Academy of Brussels, he gets to know the work of illustrator Ever Meulen
Ever Meulen
Ever Meulen is a Belgian illustrator and comic strip artist. His work has appeared in Humo, the magazine for which he drew "Balthazar de Groene Steenvreter" and "Piet Peuk"...
, a former student of the same school, which will greatly influence him. Another great influence is the discovery of Arzach, the textless comic by Moebius
Jean Giraud
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud is a French comics artist. Giraud has earned worldwide fame, not only under his own name but also under the pseudonym Moebius, and to a lesser extent Gir, the latter appearing mostly in the form of a boxed signature at the bottom of the artist's paintings, for instance the...
. Influences outside the world of comics come from the dominant styles of his youth, Punk
Punk subculture
The punk subculture includes a diverse array of ideologies, and forms of expression, including fashion, visual art, dance, literature, and film, which grew out of punk rock.-History:...
and New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
.
Bosschaert publishes his first work in (À Suivre
À Suivre
or was a Franco-Belgian comics magazine published from February 1978 to December 1997 by the Casterman publishing house....
), and produces his first published comic album in 1982 with Ikarus, but gets his first breakthrough with the satirical Pest in 't Paleis (Pest in the Palace), which appears in HUMO
HUMO
HUMO is a popular Belgian weekly radio and television magazine, written in Dutch.Originally the magazine was titled Humoradio, a portmanteau of 'humor' and 'radio'....
in 1983. It's a parody of the Belgian royal family and major politicians, and becomes a succès de scandale
Succès de scandale
Succès de scandale is French for "success from scandal", i.e. when a success derives from a scandal.It might seem contradictory that any kind of success might follow from scandal: but scandal attracts attention, and this attention is sometimes the beginning of notoriety and/or other successes...
. But Bosschaert stops making comics and works for the rest of the decade primarily as an illustrator for different magazines, including Playboy
Playboy
Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...
, and authors like Hugo Claus
Hugo Claus
Hugo Maurice Julien Claus was a leading Belgian author who published under his own name as well as various pseudonyms. Claus' literary contributions spanned the genres of drama, the novel, and poetry; he also left a legacy as a painter and film director...
. His main illustrative work appears first in publications of the Flemish television VRT
Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroep
The Vlaamse Radio- en Televisieomroeporganisatie , or VRT, is a publicly-funded broadcaster of radio and television in Flanders ....
, and later in publications of publisher Altiora and popular children's book author Marc De Bel, whom he considers as a kindred spirit and an older brother.
He also continues to make paintings, mainly female nudes and erotic works. Bosschaert is a purely figurative painter, who prefers clarity over concepts.
His first longer running comic series starts in 1990, with stories by Marc Legendre. Sam tells the adventures of an adolescent girl working in a small garage. The series stops after 8 albums though, and translations are unsuccessful. While Bosschaert tries to limit his purely commercial work to a few jobs a year, he makes an exception for people he feels connected to. He creates King Kong Kooks as a catalogue annex comic for fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck
Walter Van Beirendonck is a Belgian fashion designer. He graduated in 1980 from the Royal Arts Academy in Antwerp. Together with Dirk Van Saene, Dries van Noten, Ann Demeulemeester, Marina Yee and Dirk Bikkembergs they became known as the Antwerp Six.Since 1983, he issues his own collections...
.
More international recognition follows from 2001 on, when he collaborators with comics author Jean Dufaux
Jean Dufaux
Jean Dufaux is a Belgian comic book writer. Initially beginning his professional career as a journalist for "CINÉ-PRESSE", Dufaux started writing comic books in the 1980s...
on Jaguar, a fantasy
Fantasy
Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...
series published by Casterman
Casterman
Casterman is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, specializing in comic books and children's literature. The company is based in Tournai, Belgium.Founded in 1780, Casterman was originally a printing company and publishing house...
and translated in French and Spanish. Local success in Flanders comes when he collaborates with comedian Urbanus
Urbanus
Urbain Servranckx , also known as Urbain and Urbanus van Anus, is a Belgian stand-up comedian, actor, singer and comic book writer.-Career:...
on De Geverniste Vernepelingskes, a series which parodies famous Belgians, including the two authors.
Awards
- 1983: Provinciale Prijs voor de Schilderkunst (Provincial Award for Painting) of the province of AntwerpAntwerp (province)Antwerp is the northernmost province both of the Flemish Region, also called Flanders, and of Belgium. It borders on the Netherlands and the Belgian provinces of Limburg, Flemish Brabant and East Flanders. Its capital is Antwerp which comprises the Port of Antwerp...
, Belgium - 1991: Bronzen AdhemarBronzen AdhemarThe Bronzen Adhemar is the official Flemish Community Cultural Prize for Comics, given to a Flemish comics author for his body of work. It is awarded by the Flemish Ministry of Culture during Strip Turnhout, the major Flemish comics festival, once every two years...
, Turnhout, Belgium - 2003: Best Author (Dutch language) at the Prix Saint-MichelPrix Saint-MichelThe Prix Saint-Michel is a series of comic awards presented by the city of Brussels, with a focus on Franco-Belgian comics. They were first awarded in 1971, and are the second oldest comics award in Europe still presented, behind the Adamson Awards...
, BrusselsBrusselsBrussels , officially the Brussels Region or Brussels-Capital Region , is the capital of Belgium and the de facto capital of the European Union...
, Belgium
External links
- Homepage (French and Dutch)
- Comiclopedia page
- Biography at Arcadia, one of his publishers (Dutch)
- A page about his illustrations of children's books (Dutch)