Marc HARDY Rétrospective

From Pierre Tombal to Lolo et Sucette: the art of dark humour

The Huberty & Breyne?s Paris | Chapon ? 19 gallery is delighted to be hosting a major retrospective exhibition ? due to run from 19 June to 18 July 2026 ? dedicated to the work of Marc Hardy, a leading figure in the world of Franco-Belgian comics. Bringing together an exceptional collection of original plates, drawings and illustrations from different period?s of Hardy?s career, this exhibition offers insights into the unique world of an author who has always straddled the line between popular and irreverent, dark humour and social satire. His energetic, expressive and instantly recognisable style has made a profound impression on successive generations of readers.

Hardy is perhaps best known for Pierre Tombal, a cult series created with Raoul Cauvin in 1983 for the pages of Spirou magazine. Through the absurd and macabre adventures of a gravedigger who chats with the dead bodies he is burying, Hardy delivers an extraordinarily accessible brand of dark humour, where death becomes a pretext for laughter, mockery and, at times, a profoundly human tenderness. Thanks to its enduring success, Pierre Tombal remains one of the great classics of Belgian humour comics.

Focusing on the success of Pierre Tombal alone, however, would be to ignore the most audacious aspect of Hardy?s oeuvre. This exhibition also looks at his collaborations with comics writer Yann, where the artist explores more adult graphic material that is both more caustic and more obviously provocative.  

As well as original pages from Pierre Tombal, the exhibition will be showing pages from the memorable La Patrouille des Libellules series, a work that has become legendary for its iconoclastic tone and its dark reinterpretation of the mythologies surrounding scouting and the Second World War. Published in Circus magazine between 1984 and 1988, the series subverts the conventions of classic comics the better to expose their hypocrisies, relying on an explosive graphic approach that is extraordinarily free. Behind the caricature, exaggeration and deliberate bad taste, Hardy develops a remarkably rich style of drawing involving teeming backgrounds, dynamic compositions, faces distorted to the point of grimace and a keen sense of movement that gives each plate an almost cinematic energy.

The exhibition also revisits Lolo et Sucette, another cult creation by the Yann/Hardy duo. Through the tragicomic lives of two street prostitutes, the authors deliver a type of social satire that is both raw and burlesque, populated by grotesque characters and deliberately exaggerated situations. Hardy?s drawing style here is even freer, almost feverish, energetic in a way that constantly borders on dark caricature.

This series remains one of Franco-Belgian comics? most atypical and audacious offerings of the 1980s and 90s. Marc Hardy is an artist capable of combining classical mastery with punk energy, Franco-Belgian tradition with contemporary irreverence, and the aim of this retrospective is to showcase the sheer breadth of his talent. While aligning himself with the ?Spirou school? tradition, Hardy is unusually free in subverting its conventions, producing a unique oeuvre that is permeated by dark humour, satire, eroticism and grotesquerie, and which demonstrates consistent graphic virtuosity. This exhibition is designed to pay tribute to a major artist whose work continues to influence a great many contemporary authors and whose original plates ? even more than his published albums ? reveal  his graphic power, precise drawing style and incredible narrative vitality.

OPENING 
Thursday 18 June 2026
from 6 p.m to 9 p.m..
in the presence of  the artist

EXHIBITION
From Friday 19 June
to Saturday 18 July 2026

PARIS | Chapon - 19
19 rue Chapon 75003 Paris
Wednesday > Friday 1.30 p.m. - 7 p.m.
Saturday 12 p.m. - 7 p.m.