Christophe Blain (b. 10/8/1970, Gennevilliers, France) is one of France’s most renowned comics authors and an exceptionally versatile artist, who masters all tonalities between the sparse, quick ink drawing and the subtly pastose painting. His typical figurative and perspectival exaggerations, developed on the basis of his great drawing skills, lend his panels a captivating vitality and dynamism.

His early series ‘Isaac the Pirate’, ‘Socrates the Half-Dog’ and ‘Gus’, published by Éditions Dargaud, attracted a lot of attention. He then surprised everyone in 2010 with the first volume of ‘Weapons of Diplomacy’, for which he took the memoirs of Dominique de Villepin’s former advisor, about the latter’s turbulent time at the French Foreign Ministry, and turned them into a biting political satire that did not particularly flatter the alter ego of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. The book became a bestseller and was made into a film (‘The French Minister’) by Bertrand Tavernier in 2013. Also in that year, Blain won the Best Album Award at the Angoulême International Comics Festival for the second volume of ‘Weapons of Diplomacy’ – a prize he had already won in 2002 for the first volume of ‘Isaac the Pirate’. In 2019, Christophe Blain had the honour of releasing, in collaboration with Joann Sfar, the first part of a homage to ‘Blueberry’, taking a fresh look at this classic western comic by Jean-Michael Charlier and Jean Giraud.

Christophe Blain’s most recent book is a sophisticated non-fiction comic: Joining forces with Jean-Marc Jancovici, a leading expert on energy and the climate, he assumed the role of an interested layperson and tackled the urgent and complex debate on the possibilities of climate-friendly energy production in ‘World Without End’, published in 2021.

The extensive Christophe Blain retrospective at Cartoonmuseum Basel presents the artistic development and all facets of this French comics star – from sketchbooks through to paintings using various techniques.

Vernissage: Friday, 7/11/2025, 6:30 pm
Press conference,Thursday, 6/11/2025, 11 am
Curator: Anette Gehrig