MOEBIUS (1938-2012)

Untitled Wash on paper depicting a worshipper in front of the door of a mission in New Mexico (loosely based on the Santa Clara and Tesuque missions). Signed and dated 1997 lower right. 49,8 x 64,7 cm. Moebius went to Mexico for the first time at the age of seventeen and stayed for nine months. He went to join his mother and meet his new stepfather, where he discovered "at exactly the same time, marijuana, bop music and sex. [...] A total physical and mental depucellation!" Back in France, the young cartoonist had a hard time getting back in touch with reality: 27 months of military service, then learning about comics with Jijé before finding himself embarked on the incredible adventure that Blueberry would become. A few years later, he left for Mexico, for a period of six months. This time to find "the ecstasy of solitude and the ecstasy of anguish. More the ecstasy of the hallucinogenic mushrooms", he explains to Numa Sadoul in Mr Moebius & Dr Gir. And to conclude: "Mexico is a country of ecstasies." Moebius translates it in this magnificent painting, where we find at the same time the aspiration of the faithful, and the isolation of this church crushed by the sun of the arid regions. This wash was done at the same time and in the same conditions as the offprint of the first edition of Géronimo l'Apache, volume 26 of Blueberry. Each work responds to the other, like two sides of the same coin, or the infinite ribbon that allows one to go from one side to the other without ceasing its exploratory journey. We understand why he signed them Moebius.