Jacques TARDI (né en 1946)

Nestor Burma - 120, rue de la gare Set of three Indian ink drawings on paper for the POS (point of sale advertising) distributed to bookstores on the occasion of the release of the album. 26,2 x 34,6, 25,9 x 35,2 and 26,6 x 34,6 cm respectively. 1988. In the early 80's, Jacques Tardi was looking for a French crime writer whose novels he could adapt. A literary critic friend advised him to read Léo Malet, and for Tardi, it was a revelation. The visual style of the self-taught writer, this anti-hero doubled as an anarchist, the dark atmosphere and the streets of Paris form the whole he was looking for. Tardi began his adaptation in 1982, coached by Léo Malet himself, with Brouillard au Pont de Tolbiac. But it is his second album, 120, rue de la gare, where Malet takes his detective on both sides of the demarcation line in 1942, which really imposes the character created by Tardi. The quality of his adaptation was unanimously acclaimed, imposing his artistic universe in the collective imagination. This set of three drawings made for the release of 120, rue de la gare gathers all the main elements of the plot in a cleverly arranged triptych: Nestor Burma in his black coat, the mysterious killer of Lyon- Perrache, Inspector Faroux, the lion of Belfort located on the place Denfert-Rochereau, the front-wheel drive, the ominous house of 120, the equivocal Master Montbrison, the dark silhouette of Paris under curfew and the evocation of surrealist dreams typical of Leo Malet.