Cartoons in the Belgian Comic Strip Center, Brussels?

Holiday! Time to take the train and visit the Belgian Comic Strip Center in Brussels. As a cartoon lover, I was wondering if there were also signs of cartoons in this temple of comic strip. Belgium is famous for its comic strips and I recommend everybody to visit this place in a really beautifull Art Nouveau building. I didn't expect anything about cartoons, but to my surprice, here's what I noticed.
In The Treasure 2 original cartoons of Serge Ernst were shown.
I am a real fan of his cartoons, although he's a comic strip artist, so that made my day. Further in the exhition I found art of Kamagurka and Avoine.

2 orginal cartoons of Serge Ernst

Avoine

Last but not least I visited the large comic strip study library of the Center. I can state that more than 50.000 comic strips is a lot of books! Searching trough the books, I found the "cartoon books" corner: a modest 30 to 40 books.

The library with its...

cartoon section.

Every cartoon lover could only dream of such a museum dedicated to cartoon. Fortunately we have the ECC: not as big, not in Brussels,not with a huge budget, but surely with a big and warm heart for cartoons and cartoonists!

Split Tease. Cartoons by Davor Stambuk.

Štambuk, born in Split in 1934, was a journalist first. He comes to France in 1967. There, as a cartoonist, his career is boosted by the Prix Bellus, an award he receives from the weekly paper ‘France Dimanche’, a year later. He publishes in about ten French papers before his comeback to his country. However, his (often smutty) cartoons were constantly published in ‘Ici Paris’ up to his retirement in 1999. In addition to his cartoons published in the Croatian press, he has published four thematic cartoon books: ‘Sex Made Man’ (in France), ‘Sex and…’, ‘Summertime’, ‘In Vino Veritas’, these three in Croatia. He is a specialist of ‘no captions cartoons’.


Read more:
Cartoonbook file

Thomas Pips Tour de France Cartoons - Stage 2

Here are 3 other Thomas Pips albums with Tour de France Cartoons.
Publication date isn't mentioned in the second album, but I guess it must be around 1973/1974.
These vintage albums and some other that I don't own, can still be found on Ebay (Belgium), Kapaza, Yezzz ... for a reasonable price. (1 to 10 euro)

Also read the prevous article about Buth and Thomas Pips.

Vintage album - nr 2

Recent catalogue , collection of cartoons published
in the former books - 2007

Detailed info :

Satyrykon Legnica 1979-2007 + 2008

2008 catalogue cover

Legnica's SATYRYKON is a unique and unrivalled event in Poland. The American magazine "Witty World" included it among 10 best festivals awarding it its Grand Prix, and FECO (The Federation of Cartoonist Organisation) awarded it its maximum "5 star" note.
On its website, you can read the full history of Satyrikon.


Elzbieta Pietraszko, curator of the exhibition and
managing director (right) and interpreter (left)


For the moment, the exhibition of 30 years Satyrykon 1979-2007 can be seen till Sept 28, 2008 in the ECC in Kruishoutem. It shows the collection of (replicas) awarded works. I was really surprised by the quality of the exhibited works. Satyrykon is topclass indeed.

Satyrykon 2008 catalogue

There is a small exhibition catalogue (12 pages) , showing 24 gold winning cartoons and telling the history of Satyrykon in English and French.


Of course, there is the Satyrykon 2008 catalogue too, with selected works of Lex Drewinski, Alessandro Gatto, Pawel Kuczynski and many many other very taleted cartoonists. A must have!
All the award winning cartoons from 1977 till 2008 can be seen here.
On the Satyrykon site, you also find a list of all the exhibition catalogues.

Click here to see more ECC exhibition pics.
During the Satyrykon Exhition, there is a splendid exhition of cartoonist Stef Provijn too.

Some Satyrykon catalogue covers:

Tour de France cartoons: Thomas Pips by Léo De Budt (Buth) - Stage 1

Léo de Budt (Ghent, Belgium , 1919) is a gifted artist. As a student of Frits Van den Berghe he won the ‘prix de Rome’.
He is best known as ‘Buth’, the cartoonist who in 1946 in the popular newspaper 'Het Volk' started with the character ‘Thomas Pips’. A year later he started drawing the cycling adventures of Pips in the Tour de France. His sports cartoons which were very popular during the Tour, daily appeared in the sports pages of 'Het Volk'. In 1962 there was a separate Tour newspaper 'Rondegazetje', that was sold in the eve on the streets. In it, there was always an event from the tour stage of that day translated into a cartoon.
In his Tour de France cartoons there was always a little mouse (sometimes 2) hidden. Seeking that mouse has nestled in the collective memory of the children of that time, including myself.
(Source: flyer exhibition Buth. vader van Thomas Pips en andere muizenissen…)

Being successfull, some Thomas Pips cartoon books were to be published. The first one was 'Thomas Pips in de Ronde van Frankrijk - 80 cartoons door Buth'. There is no publication date mentioned in the book, but I guess it was published in 1971 or 1972.

Find the mouse:

Nowadays Thomas Pips is still popular in Flanders. In 'Het Nieuwsblad' (newspaper) a series of Thomas Pips cartoons reappears during the Tour 2008. Find the mouse! ... and win a price! (daily Thomas Pips cartoon during the Tour 2008 - click on DOE MEE)
This is what I saw in the newspaper yesterday (July 4):


I visited the Buth exhibition in Ghent (Nov 30- Febr 17, 2008). I was overwhelmed by the variety, the quantity and quality of the art Léo De Buth performed in his career. Here are some pics of the exhibiton.






In a next post, I'll introduce to you some more Thomas Pips Tour de France cartoon books.

Read more:

My other pics of the Buth exhibition
Buth as illustrator
Exhibition in the ECC (June-Sept 2007)
Pics of Buth and the exhibition