Swarte has always been someone who tickled me, with his beautifully clean, mad, pleasing designs. For now, this will have to serve as a minor introduction to his work.
Joost Swarte is a Dutch graphic designer, illustrator and architect, and one of the most famous Dutch comic artists internationally, even though he has not made that many actual comics. Most of his better known series, like Jopo de Pojo, Anton Makassar and Katoen en Pinbal (1972-1979), were made in the 1970s. Afterwards he became far better known as an illustrator and architect.
Swarte is not just a follower of the "Clear Line" tradition of Hergé and Edgar P. Jacobs, but is actually the very person who coined and popularised the phrase "Ligne Claire".
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Swarte draws in a very calculated, technically-precise style with much attention to bright colours and elegant design work. Swarte is additionally (co-)initiator of magazines Modern Papier and Scratches, as well as the festival Stripdagen Haarlem, and the Hergé Museum in Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
--Lambiek, with edits & additions by Johnny
More here, with samples: https://www.lambiek.net/artists/s/swarte1.htm
