Plantu (Jean Plantureux) was born on March 23rd, 1951 in Paris, France. He gave up his studies in Medicine in 1971 and moved to Brussels to follow drawing courses at the Ecole Saint-Luc. In 1972, he returned to Paris, offered his cartoons to several newspapers and was hired at Le Monde where he published his first cartoon about the Vietnam war. In 1974, Claude Julien, director of Le Monde Diplomatique, also published his cartoons in his newspaper. From 1980 to 1986, he worked for Phosphore magazine. And since 1991, he publishes a weekly page in magazine L’Express. In November 1991, during an exhibition of his cartoons in Tunis, Plantu meets Yasser Arafat. Yasser Arafat draws himself the Star of David from the Israeli flag on a cartoon by Plantu who wins the “Rare Document” Award at the Angers Scoop Festival. The film is broadcasted on french TV channel France 2. A year later, he meets Shimon Peres in Jerusalem. For the first time in history, both signatures of the leaders of the PLO and Israeli diplomacy are displayed together on the same drawing, a year before the Oslo accords of 1993. In 1995, the layout of Le Monde changed and Plantu couldn’t choose the subject of his political cartoons anymore. To oppose the Artistic Director of the newspaper who had fired two cartoonists, Plantu created a mischievous character: the little mouse. In 2002, he met the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in Paris to prepare a gathering of international cartoonists, which becomes the “Cartooning for Peace” organization in 2006. Cartooning for Peace promotes freedom of expression around the world and counts today more than 140 cartoonists. Plantu has taken part in a large number of group and individual exhibitions in France and all around the world and has received many awards for his work; In September 2013, he also received the Honoris Causa prize from the University of Liege in Belgium. He has published more than 60 books of his cartoon collection. He lives and works in Paris, France. For further information visit www.plantu.net and www.cartooningforpeace.org. Photo: © Jerôme Tripier
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