Edmond François Calvo
Born on August 26, 1892 in Elbeuf (Seine-Maritime), where his childhood took place. He died at the age of 65, on October 11, 1957, in Pont-Saint-Pierre (Eure), Edmond François Calvo, known as Calvo, cultivated a passion for drawing in a very self-taught way while working in various trades (director of a clog factory, owner of a hotel-restaurant), nothing predestined him to become one of the greatest names in French comics.
After starting out as an illustrator and cartoonist for Le Canard enchaîné, among others, working in the advertising sector and also devoting himself to sculpture, Calvo sold his establishment in 1938 in order to devote himself fully to his passion for drawing, which had never ceased to inhabit him.
He was too old to take part in the front line, but in his own way he was no less an active witness to the Second World War, notably through the work that was to make him known at the Liberation, The Beast is Dead! (text by Victor Dancette and Jacques Zimmermann), an animal transposition of the conflict in which each people sees itself, in features that are as biting as they are tasty, assimilated to an animal. Even if some reservations may have been expressed here and there about the story itself, given the context of the time, the singularity of the drawing has made La Bête est morte ! one of the masterpieces of the history of comics.
Calvo's passion for the animal world, which he has always cultivated by composing a world of tenderness and humour, and his ability to express human feelings in a powerful and caricatural way, led him to create the Abécédaire (1946) in which the central character, a rabbit called "Mr Loyal", works in a circus in the middle of a menagerie - the author's clear intention being to simultaneously entertain and educate children, thus making them learn the alphabet in a very playful way.
Having excelled in depicting an animal world that breathes joie de vivre, Calvo was nicknamed the "French Walt Disney". His style is characterized by a strong realism in his art of forcing the line, but also by a concern for liveliness - a style that was immediately recognizable and not imitated, yet inspired Uderzo who, as a child, willingly visited Calvo in his studio.
An original artistic approach that has made a lasting contribution to the growth of children's books, in the wake of the profound literacy movement that marked the Third Republic in France, but also with the preponderance of images that facilitated the distribution of illustrated publications in all homes. However, it was not until the 1970s that Calvo was rediscovered, propelling him into the firmament of comic strip authors.