The Comic Strip Festival, created in 2010 with nearly 100,000 visitors each year, will celebrate more than 250 artists during one month. As part of the first International Focus weekend of the Comic Book Festival, we invite you to a special day with a Polish accent. You can discover the program and the biography of the invited artists below.
Saturday 11 September
@Belgian Comic Strip Centre (Rue des Sables 20, 1000 Bruxelles) > Free with registration
11 a.m to 12 a.m > Signing session by Graza and Kas Kasprzyk
12 a.m to 1. pm > Workshop for children 10+ “How to create your own hero?” with Marzena Sowa (Cancelled)
1 p.m to 2 p.m. > Signing session by Marzena Sowa (Cancelled)
@Łódzkie House (Square Marie-Louise 2, 1000 Bruxelles)
6 p.m > Evening and meeting with Polish and Belgian comic book authors & opening of the exhibition “Invincible” by Rafał Mikołajczyk.
Marzena Sowa dite “Marzi”
Workshop for children: Saturday 11 at 12 a.m to 1 p.m @Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée – Cancelled
Signign session: Saturday 11 at 1 p.m to 2 p.m @Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée – Cancelled
Marzi is a Polish comic book writer born in 1979. She arrived in France in 2001 to finish her studies in literature. In 2004, she started working with the cartoonist Sylvain Savoia to create an autobiographical comic book, “Marzi”, which recounts her childhood in Poland during the last years of the communist regime. She has many other scripted collaborations including “N’embrassez pas qui vous voulez“, with Sandrine Revel published in 2012, and which speaks of Poland in the era of Stalin or in 2014, she signed “L’Insurrection, avant l’orage” drawn by K. Gawronkiewicz.
More info on the website of her publisher.
Graza et Kas
Signing session: Saturday 11 at 11 a.m @Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée
Attendance during the evening on Saturday 11 at 6 p.m @Łódzkie House
Together, their signing sessions take on an exceptional dimension: Kas draws and Graza sublimates by coloring.
Grażyna Kasprzak – better known under the artistic pseudonym Graza is a Polish comic book set designer and colorist based in Belgium. She is best known for the colors of Thorgal, Jean Van Hamme and Grzegorz Rosiński. Graza studied drawing and painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow, then worked as a set designer for Polish theaters.
Kas, whose real name is Zbigniew Kasprzak – is a Polish painter, illustrator, caricaturist and cartoonist. His corrosive pencil stroke earned him the first prize at the Satyr Triennial in Łódź in 1977. In 1988, he won another first prize for the poster of the Polish Comic Strip Exhibition at the Sierre Festival, which allowed him to meet Grzegorz Rosiński and enter the world of French-language comics, which he had long been fond of.
Rafał Mikołajczyk
Exhibition based on his comic book inspired by a short story by S. Lem
during the evening on Saturday 11 at 18H @ Łódzkie House
Graphic designer trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Łódź. For years, he honed his skills to finally be a few years ahead of his time and find himself in the creation of comics. He always surprises, not only with unique ideas, but also with unusual solutions. The comic book “Invincible” is his long awaited debut.
Check out an overview of his work here.
