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PROFILES

Ils sont artiste, cheffe étoilée, designer ou apiculteur, pilote automobile ou créatrice de mode. Leur point commun ? Ces personnalités glamour ou au cœur de la vie culturelle, économique et sociale régionale sont les moteurs de l’actualité azuréenne. Découvrez sans filtre le témoignage de leur parcours, leurs rêves, leurs ambitions et leurs projets à venir.

August 2021

Jacky Ananou

Time of encounters

In the morning, he shares his jazz on the radio. In the afternoon, he gets into the rhythm of the Bic-Pen drawings he exhibits in the region. We caught up with the Nice figure who combines music with visual art.

By Tanja Stojanov
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Liz McComb
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© Claudio Citarella
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Keith Richard

Wearing round glasses and his hair in a ponytail, Jacky Ananou welcomes us into his studio apartment close to “La Libé”. He is dressed all in blue, the colour of the ballpoint pen drawings he executes with impressive attention to detail. A large-scale canvas portraying the great guitarists from the 50s to the 90s, including depictions of Clapton, Hendrix and Prince, and works on the walls by his artist friends Sosno, Taride, and Larsen set the tone. In a matter of minutes, the warm voice of Radio Chalom’s Monday 7pm show, the man currently presenting works at the Moi, Je exhibition at the Château de Cagnes-sur-Mer, takes us on a journey to a universe made of riffs and hyper-realism.
Let’s rewind briefly to understand the career path of this blues-mad draftsman-artist and guitarist in his spare time: “I started as a disc jockey, as we were known back then, in big Parisian clubs. Then I went from assistant to sound engineer at Barclay’s.” A short trip to Canada and the United States brought Jacky back to Nice, where he launched a very original concept store. “Motus was a clothing shop/art gallery with fun guests. It became a meeting point for musicians and painters”, continues this character who liked proposing themes to his artists such as Woodstock or jazzmen for the collective exhibitions he organised in situ each month. The adventure lasted until 2017.

Key encounters of a portraitist
During all those years, Jacky also painted at night in his studio next to the Chagall Museum. “I’m now a day bird. Slowness personified, at the age of 70 I have found my medium, knowing that it takes 4 hours to draw about 10cm with a Bic-pen”, he adds humourously. Indeed, Jacky went through a period of painting before he started drawing blue ink portraits we know today. “It was when I met Narrative Figuration members, Combas, the Di Rosa brothers and Francky Boy, hat I started to paint. But I preferred working with oils rather than acrylics because they dry less quickly.” It was another encounter that led to him becoming a pen specialist: “Being very sensitive to people who draw, I was impressed by the work of a great artist during an exhibition at the Centquatre in Paris. I contacted him, and he tagged along with me for several months—a kind of generous companionship.” Ananou invites those who come across him to a different temporality.

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Bob Marley
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La montée des escaliers
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