Wall composition in painted wood (1993)
In François Schuiten’s drawings, there are almost always more buildings than people. For Porte de Hal station, the artist designed a playful piece that is totally in keeping with his works as a comic strip artist. The picture evokes a modern city, combining sky-scrapers and fragments of authentic “old trams” which seem to spring out of the station walls, turning the metro into a link between the past and the future. The work of art in Porte de Hal station is inspired by the architecture in “Brüsel”, an album from the “Cités Obscures” (Dark cities) series. It is not the only large-scale work by this comic strip artist that is on display in Brussels. Schuiten also designed a comic strip wall in Belgium’s capital city. He also designed the decoration for Arts et Métiers metro station in Paris.
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FRANÇOIS SCHUITEN (Brussels, 1956)
François Schuiten hails from a family of architects, but he took another direction in his work. He is best known for his comic strip stories, in which, along with his brother Luc, an architect, he creates an imaginary world, “Les Cités Obscures” (The dark cities), where the past subtly mixes with an alarming future. François Schuiten studied at the Institut Saint Luc, where he met Claude Renard. He worked with him on his first comic strip albums. Later on he embarked on a project with Benoît Peeters, with whom he worked with on “L’archiviste” (The Archivist), “La Tour” (The Tower), “La route d’Armilia” (The Road to Armilia), “Le musée A.Desombres” (The A.Desombres Museum), ”Brüsel”, ”L’Echo des Cités”, “Mary la penchée” (Leaning Mary) and “L’Enfant penchée” (The Leaning Child). In 2002 the comic strip illustrator received a prize at Angoulême festival in recognition of his entire works. Schuiten also designed countless posters, illustrations, serigraphy, lithographs, graphic designs for films and even around a dozen different Belgian postage stamps.
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