Philippe Druillet (1944-) - Intemporalité du cinema multicuturel

About the immense international artist that Philippe Druillet is /

This work was created at my request by Philippe Druillet, a faithful friend, sincere and immensely talented, endowed with an incommensurable genius of which we pride ourselves on counting among the rare friends of my family. For this cinematographic cultural event, his genius produced it without any directive to avoid it being a commission but simply as a discussion on the exchanges of views regarding the message that was desired to be conveyed. This event was organized in 1988. During a lunch at his studio we found a few blank copies of this laid paper lithograph whose image had served for posters and a catalog. We shared the last copies that he re-signed, stamped, and dated on the day of our meeting in 2010. On his website and in his biography there are only two posters that Philippe Druillet created for cinematic events: this one and the other for the Camera d’Or in Cannes.

In a previous life, being part of the film world through my grandfather, I organized film events, I was a film and events producer, with a cinema exploitation license that I built, and I welcomed more than 500 to 800 artists and personalities, journalists, and cinema professionals annually. My grandfather having co-founded one of the largest film production houses in 1938 and up to the mid-20th century the complete catalog happened to contain some of the greatest titles of 20th‑century cinema, including one listed as major for the centennial of French-language cinema in 1995.

About the edition for sale /
Printed in 1988
Edition: Limited edition of 20 prints – sold out – SIGNED AND STAMPED WITH CREATION OF A DRAWING 2010 (lower and lower-right side)
Dimensions: 60 x 80 cm Height x Width x Depth
Support: Limited edition on cotton paper
Unframed
(Note: the photos presented with a frame in the descriptives show reflections tied to lighting because the glass is not tinted. Obviously there are no marks, neither recto nor verso, like new) kept flat and protected from time to prevent yellowing of the paper artwork.

Lithograph flat rolled for shipping protected in tissue paper then light kraft paper. Also provided with a pair of tactile protection gloves to avoid staining or creasing the artwork before it is placed in a reinforced cardboard tube. Tracking of shipment and insurance included.

About Philippe Druillet / Condensed essential biography.

Philippe Druillet, born June 28, 1944 in Toulouse, is a French comic book artist and writer. He is also a poster designer, sculptor, and decorator.

He was born in Toulouse on June 28, 1944, the day of the assassination by the Resistance of Philippe Henriot, the Vichy regime’s Minister of Propaganda. It is to honor him that the future artist was named Philippe. His two parents were fervent fascists. His father, Victor Druillet, who fought the Spanish Civil War on the side of the franquists, was at the time head of the Militia of Gers in Auch: his mother, Denise, was also involved in the local Militia, of which she was the administrative head. In August 1944, shortly after Philippe’s birth, his parents fled to Germany, to Sigmaringen, where Louis-Ferdinand Céline cared for the child, who spent 25 days under an oxygen tent, then to Figueras in Catalonia, Spain to escape pursuit for collaboration. They were condemned to death in abstentia. It was only later that Philippe Druillet discovered his parents’ past.
He returned to France in Paris in 1952 after his father’s death. During this period he could only be accepted by his peers as the artist, the marginal, filling entire notebooks with drawings. He also spent a lot of time in cinemas (Fritz Lang’s The Indian Tomb, Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet, King Kong, The Thief of Bagdad). Philippe Druillet considers this period decisive for his future evolution.

Around 13-14 years old, he turned to science fiction and discovered H. P. Lovecraft. In 1963, his grandmother becomes concierge at No. 17 Avenue d’Eylau in the 16th arrondissement of Paris, and he can stay on the top floor in a maid’s room. The second floor was occupied by the designer Piem. After his studies, he becomes a photographer. Then around 16-17 he meets Jean Boullet. This latter teaches him the basics of drawing and painting and opens his mind to aesthetics and madness. In 1964-1965, he is in the army at the Service cinématographique des armées, which leaves him free time. Influenced by reading The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier, he decides to pursue drawing upon his return to civilian life.

His first book, The Mystery of the Abyss, published in 1966 by Losfeld, features his recurring hero Lone Sloane in a science fiction story. Pressed by the publisher to finish his album, he completes the last thirty pages in two months. He would later call the Sloane from Losfeld “very badly drawn.”
Thanks to this first album, for which he hardly receives any copyright, he joins OPTA, where he does covers and illustrations.

The Pilote era /
In 1973 Druillet was in Montreal. He was also an actor at Théâtre du Soleil for three years, notably during May 68. In 1969, he showed a few pages of Yragaël to Jean Giraud, and René Goscinny gave him approval for eight pages in Pilote magazine. He continues Lone Sloane’s saga (see Delirius) there (in a style increasingly flamboyant, innovative with bold page layouts and the introduction of computer-generated imagery in the settings he presented on Volume television programs in 1971, then Italiques in 1973).

Metal Hurlant and Les Humanoïdes Associés /
In 1974, after disagreements with Pilote’s editors, he left the magazine and founded, with Giraud and Jean-Pierre Dionnet, the monthly Metal Hurlant and the publishing house Les Humanoïdes Associés.

La Nuit /
This 1976 album marks a turning point in Druillet’s work, as he intimately ties it to accompanying his wife in illness, until her death. Graphically very accomplished, the album features innovative coloring and layout that serve a despairing narrative. For the artist deeply affected by his partner’s death, the book, to which it is dedicated, was a way to exorcise his pain. Of all Druillet’s universes, La Nuit is probably the darkest, most nihilistic. It depicts the struggle of a decaying humanity, organized into anarchic bands, heavily drug-addicted, who must go to conquer the “blue deposit,” a fantastical source of all the drugs enabling these quasi-zombies to endure in this world of madness. These bands have a rock ’n’ roll edge; they embody freedom, anarchism, the will to live. On the other hand, they must confront agents of order and of nothingness to reach the blue deposit. There is no happy ending. If anything, the opposite. The hero, Heinz, follows a personal journey identical to that of a band leader, illuminated and unflinching, as he pursues this path toward the abyss while progressively losing his strange innocence. He becomes aware before others that this momentum leads nowhere, that their struggle is futile and their destruction inevitable. The exuberant life Druillet depicts cannot escape programmed death. This album underscores the total absence of an escape at the final outcome, where Druillet had often emphasized the power of certain madness, rebellion, the primacy of life over metal, machines, and order; here there is only inexorable death.

Salammbô /
In 1980, Druillet produced Salammbô, a trilogy inspired by Gustave Flaubert’s novel of the same name.
The plot mixes pure invention with fidelity to Flaubert’s narrative. In fact, apart from the introduction explaining Lone Sloane’s presence inside Salammbô’s world and the conclusion which allows Sloane not to be completely annihilated, the entire story closely follows the original novel, long passages even being reproduced verbatim. Here, Lone Sloane is merged by Druillet into the character of Mathô the barbarian, who attempts to destroy Carthage and to conquer Princess Salammbô, an attempt that yields grand double-page battle scenes, ideal for Druillet’s full expressive graphical creativity. Across three albums, the author explores different, often innovative registers, in a style close to painting. Several panels are also reinterpreted on canvas.
Impressed by the work of the tapestry weavers, Philippe Druillet contacted Emmanuel Gérard, director of the Cité internationale de la tapisserie d’Aubusson, after seeing in 2022 the first work of the great Aubusson tapestry L’Imaginaire de Hayao Miyazaki. In 2026 the face of Gustave Flaubert’s heroine drawn by Philippe Druillet enters the collections of the Cité internationale. The Salammbô tapestry, costing €100,000 and over 11 m2 (4.20 m by 2.70 m) is funded 20% by the Cité, 40% by patronage, and by the Ministry of Culture for the remainder. It is woven starting in autumn 2025 by the Françoise Vernaudon and Inès Herlin workshop on the cardboard prepared in March by Delphine Mangeret for a loom drop in summer 2026.

After Salammbô /
In 1986, he created Bleu l’Enfant de la Terre, a thirteen-episode animated TV series broadcast in 1990 on Canal+. To promote toys, producer IDDH insisted in the scripts on Rocklords, a Bandai license, which Philippe Druillet did not support.
In 1990, he directed the video for William Sheller’s Excalibur.
In 1996, he received the Grand Prix national des Arts graphiques.
During the legal dispute in the 1990s between Albert Uderzo and Éditions Dargaud, Philippe Druillet sided with his publisher and stated that Uderzo is “a Citizen Kane without the talent of Orson Welles.” He wanted to set up a publishing house and bankrupt all his authors to add one or two Ferraris in his garage. With Amélie Aubert and Benjamin Legrand, he created Xcalibur, a 40-episode CGI animated series broadcast from 2002 on Canal+.
He designed the sets for the TV series Les Rois maudits (2005 version).
Beyond his work as a comic author and illustrator, he has also explored opera-rock, painting, sculpture, architecture, and infographics.
In 2013 the vinyl “Cosmic Machine - A voyage across French cosmic & electronic avant-garde 1970-1980,” whose cover is entirely illustrated by three of his drawings, was released.

Works /
Detailed article: Philippe Druillet bibliography.
In January 2014 his autobiography Delirium was published by Les Arènes, with David Alliot.

Stage scenery /
Music is part of Philippe Druillet’s universe. Rock as well as opera nourish his imagination, and he describes his albums as “scores.” He discovers Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana and Verdi’s Requiem by buying his first 33 RPM records at flea markets. In 2014, the year of his 70th birthday, he was invited to visually illustrate the cantata performed at the Orange Chorégies. In 2016 the messa da requiem followed. Creations and excerpts from his albums are animated and projected on the wall of the ancient theater, one hundred and three meters long by thirty-seven meters high, adapting to the libretto and to the architecture of the place, balancing with the statue of Augustus perched atop the wall.

Movie posters /
The Quest for Fire, 1981.
Yor, the Hunter from the Future, 1983.
The Name of the Rose, 1986.

Magazines /
Approach to Centauri (Moebius drawing), short story published in Metal Hurlant reissued in White Nightmare, Les Humanoïdes Associés, 1977.