Cartoonist "Mix & Remix" is dead

The French-speaking Swiss cartoonist Philippe Becquelin, alias "Mix & Remix", died on Monday evening at the age of 58. He revolutionized the illustrated press, says fellow cartoonist Patrick Chappatte. "His determined fight against pancreatic cancer ended last night," his family announced on social media. They are infinitely sad.

For many years, the well-known illustrator has been putting his humorous observations on current affairs in a nutshell. These drawings were published in the French-speaking Swiss weekly magazine L'Hebdo (1987-2012) and in the newspaper Le Matin Dimanche, among others. "Mix & Remix" also drew for the political program "Infrarouge" on French-speaking Swiss television, for the French Courrier international and the Italian Internazionale.

High school dropped out

Philippe Becquelin was born in St-Maurice VS in 1958. He was enthusiastic about art from an early age. He dropped out of high school after a turbulent time at school, but later successfully graduated from the Lausanne School of Art. In 1984, he gave himself the pseudonym "Mix & Remix", as he was still drawing together with his wife Dominique, whom he had met in the same year. The caricaturist had two children with her.

Tower guard as a bread-and-butter job

Before he was able to make a living from his art, he worked as a tower keeper and hourly crier at Lausanne Cathedral from 1991 to 2001. When the underground concert venue Dolce Vita opened its doors in Lausanne in 1985, "Mix & Remix" painted concert posters and flyers and also helped design the interior decoration of the rock and punk venue. The reputation came in the mid-1990s. In 1998, "Mix & Remix" was given a whole page in the weekly magazine L'Hebdo. In 2005, he exhibited at the prestigious comic festival in Angoulême, France. In 2016, Becquelin was awarded the prize of the Vaud Cultural Foundation.

Dayer: "He dared to do anything"

"With him, the drawing press was no longer like it was before," says the French-speaking Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte, who draws for Le Temps, the NZZ am Sonntag and the New York Times. "In the beginning, many people said he drew badly. But they simply didn't understand the original power of his little figures." Someone who managed to make people laugh with such a direct style was a genius, said Chappatte, who paid tribute to the deceased on social media on Tuesday with a caricature and an "adieu Mix". The trademarks of the "Mix & Remix" characters were their large noses.

Ariane Dayer, editor-in-chief of Matin Dimanche, described Philippe Becquelin as an "exceptional illustrator - completely independent". "He attacked the left, the right. He dared to do anything, even mock the disease," Dayer recalls. On a human level, Becquelin was funny and warm-hearted, but also a little reserved. He found out about his illness in March. "Together with the medical certificates he sent me, he made hilarious drawings; he laughed until the end," Dayer told the SDA news agency. (SDA)

Image: Hebdo.ch