Jean Effel

Effel, Jean 

(pseudonym of François Lejeune). Born Feb. 2, 1908, in Paris. French cartoonist and caricaturist.

Effel has been a regular contributor to newspapers and magazines, including Humanité (since 1936) and Humanité dimanche. His political caricatures make up an original satiric chronicle of the Third Republic. Effel won popularity for the good-natured folk humor of his albums of Bible stories, The Creation of the World (1951–54) and The Creation of Man (1951–53), which were published in Russian under the title The Creation of the World and Man (Moscow, 1959). Effel works in pen and ink, sometimes with a wash, and occasionally uses a soft-tip pen. His style is clear and linear. The Creation of the World inspired an animated film by the Czechoslovak director E. Hofman in 1956 and a ballet to a score by A. P. Petrov, staged in the USSR in 1971.

Effel, an honorary member of the Academy of Arts of the USSR (1973), has been awarded the Gold Peace Medal (1953) and the Order of the Friendship of Peoples (1978). In 1968 he received the Lenin Prize for Strengthening Peace Among Nations.

REFERENCE

Zhan Effel’. [Album. Foreword by I. N. Novosel’skaia.] Leningrad, 1963.