Sara (born on March 17th 1950 in Nantes, France) is a French artist. She has been living in Paris since 1971. She received the Golden Apple at the 20th Biennial of illustrations in Bratislava in 2005.
Contents |
Art of Sara
Artistic style
It is difficult to distinguish the easthetic themes from the scenaristic ones. For example, is the red color a theme or a medium ? Most/ of her albums are filled with the city, the sea and with animals, but the recurrent themes are definitely solitude and encounter. A Sara’s monograph was published by gallery owner Marie-Thérèse Devèze. It shows about fifty recurrent themes in her entire works including painting, photography and torn paper.
Technics
Sara tears paper to make children’s books and individual pictures. “When the city tears up” is an exhibition of her torn-papered pictures about Paris, and has been shown many times since 1995.
Influence
Among her two main sources of inspiration, one is very classical : Sara confessed to be quite influenced by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Henri Matisse. The other source comes from the comic books, and particularly from Hugo Pratt’s free style and his series Corto Maltese.
Texts and theater
Although most of her albums are wordless, some of them contain texts written by Sara, e.g. the argotic text of Je suis amoureux (I am in love), or the literary letter a personage writes to the author in the album A Quai (Alongside the Quay). Besides, Sara wrote, S’envoler (to fly away), a play directed by director Violetta Wowczac in 2006.
Quotes
- “The desire to make these books came in a moment when I didn’t have enough money to buy much material and paint in watercolours and oil. I had nothing but recycled paper... I tried to create something with almost nothing and the idea of torn paper came from it”.
Interview with Claude Hubert-Ganiyare, from La Joie par les livres, April 1991.
- “People often use words as weapons and munitions. (...) The style is a discipline which makes these arms fall to let the world express a precise thought through the simplest and most beautiful arrangement. In fact, this definition could also be applied to images”.
Interview with Janine Kotwica in La Revue des Livres pour Enfants, April 2006
- “I don’t believe that “shared universes” depend on age. Marketing tries to classify the people according to their ages ; but some human hearts from every age can escape from that classification”.
Interview with Janine Kotwica in La Revue des Livres pour Enfants, April 2006
- “The story maintains the attention of the reader or spectator. My message is not directed at the attention of my audience, but at their emotional and visual capacity”.
Interview with Janine Kotwica in La Revue des Livres pour Enfants, April 2006
- “I must confess that I don’t believe in the success of revolutions since they are always taken over by men of power, but I do believe in struggle and hope”.
Interview with Janine Kotwica in La Revue des Livres pour Enfants, April 2006
- “I love the quays, the atmospheres of arrival and departure, and I am receptive to the inner debate of the sailor, who dreams to go away, free from any chain, and in that aim jails himself in cargos of metal and ties himself up with stiff uniforms, unconscious of his contradictions”.
Interview with Janine Kotwica in La Revue des Livres pour Enfants, April 2006
