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The Dying Draughtsman
Chili Com Carne,
2013
- 120 pages
- 16 x 23 cm
- two colours litho printing
- perfect binding
- written in English, with Portuguese translations
- edition of 500 copies copies
out of stock"Francisco Koppens has a dying profession, a dying religion, lives in a dying home and has dying thoughts. He is a Portuguese architectural draughtsman living in London who believes he is destined to commit suicide. He talks to his wife but she doesn’t answer back. He does erotic comics as a private compulsion, only to cover them with black ink at the end. He ends up with black monochromes which he then tears to bits. The sign of the monochrome as self censorship permeates Koppens’ life. He visits endless art exhibitions, only to be smitten by dread and doubt. We follow him from depression to psychosis, and then back to a sort of starting point.
The Dying Draughtsman could be described as a fictive construction built on real, personal events lived through the life of the author."
Francisco Sousa Lobo is currently one of the most interesting and prolific authors in the portuguese comics scene. After a long period away from comics, he started making them again a few years ago while working on his PhD in Art at Goldsmiths College, in London, which he completed recently. His comics are often semi-autobiographical with a strong critical leaning. He has declared: "I am between the worlds of art and comics, and cannot make clear-cut distinctions anymore."