GIRAUD

JEAN GIRAUD BLUEBERRY Fort Navajo (T.1), Dargaud 1965 Original plate n° 18 prepublished in the newspaper Pilote n° 218 of December 26, 1963. India ink on paper 33 × 41 cm (12.99 × 16.14 in.) Historic plate because it comes from the first Blueberry album where, despite the visible influence of Jijé, Gir succeeds in making this chase sequence a breathtaking scene. A slight low angle makes the Navajos, those who pursue our heroes, look imposing, while the following square shows how the mount, loaded by two riders, is moving forward with difficulty. The evocation of the desert is perfectly realistic from a drawer who knows the American West like the back of his hand. The brushstroke, although already virtuoso, has not yet reached the summit that we will know a few years later. There are two reasons for this: Giraud is still under the influence of his Belgian co-author and mentor, Jijé, whose reference is the wise Western, marked by the Hollywood Western dominated at the time by the figure of John Ford. With the evolution of American cinema that led to Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western, but also by distancing himself from his partners, Gir/Giraud took the genre to new heights.