Joann Sfar is one of France's best-known and most prolific comic authors. Growing up in Nice as the son of Jewish parents and influenced by the early death of his mother, he began drawing and writing at a young age. For Joann Sfar, drawing became a way of life, a place of refuge, his way of seeing and interpreting the world - a "life in drawing".

Together with the Stadtmuseum Erlangen, the International Comic Salon presents the first exhibition in Germany dedicated to Joann Sfar. With over 200 drawings and sketchbooks, photographs and films, some of which have never been published before, the exhibition traces the career of an extraordinary artist who continually blurs the boundaries between comics, literature and film. Sfar's drawings are laboratories for his exploration of the world around him, both philosophical and real. His multi-layered work cannot be pinned down to one genre. His fantastical tales feature vampires, pirates and adventurers, the mystical Golem and the Little Prince. As a cartoonist, Sfar has worked for "Charlie Hebdo" and "Paris Match", and as a director he made a film biography about the chansonnier Serge Gainsbourg, which won three Césars. He interweaves real-life themes such as friendship, childhood, fantasy, joy, sexuality and stigmatisation with his own Jewish identity. His personal sketchbooks are constant companions - reflections of his own drawing practice and social studies at the same time.

Joann Sfar conceives his work without beginning or end; characters from his narrative cosmos become continuous companions with recurring appearances. In his Klezmer series, for example, he tells of Jewish musicians fleeing the pogroms in Ukraine at the beginning of the 20th century and draws a touching narrative of individuals fleeing from a world of dread and marginalisation into a world of music. He creates spiritual portraits of his role models from painting, such as Pascin or Chagall, transports his readers to Jewish culture at the turn of the century in Eastern Europe, Paris and Algeria and manages to combine the horror of exclusion, stigmatisation and persecution with his characters' joyful will to live in an admirably poetic way. He creates spiritual portraits of his role models from painting, such as Pascin or Chagall, transports his readers to Jewish culture at the turn of the century in Eastern Europe, Paris and Algeria and manages to combine the horror of marginalisation, stigmatisation and persecution with his characters' joyful will to live in an admirably poetic way. Autobiographical explorations such as "Die Synagoge" or "Der Götzendiener" (publication date of the German edition: 1 June 2024) tie in with events from his own childhood and youth and trace a life shaped by anti-Semitic experiences and the rise of the political right in France.

Sfar's best-known work, "The Rabbi's Cat", now comprises 12 volumes (volumes 11 and 12 will be published in German in autumn 2024), has been translated into 22 languages and was made into a film in 2011. The rabbi's talking cat accompanies the protagonists of the series through Jewish culture and the political events of historical Algeria. At once affectionate and ironic, the cat challenges its owner, acting as a critical reflection of ideology, philosophy and doctrine and offering a humorous and insightful look at Jewish life at the time.

At this year's International Comic Salon, Joann Sfar will be honoured with the Max and Moritz Award for an outstanding lifetime achievement.

Eva-Maria Hugo and Andreas Thum

The exhibition was conceived by the Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (mahJ), Paris. Curation: Clémentine Deroudille and Thomas Ragon
Adaptation for Erlangen: Eva-Maria Hugo and Andreas Thum
An exhibition of the Stadtmuseum Erlangen and the Erlangen International Comic Salon
With the kind support of the Deutsch-Französisches Institut Erlangen and the Institut Français, Berlin