Parcours des Mondes reveals his Honorary President Guy Delcourt

We are honoured to unveil our new Honorary President for the 2021 edition of Parcours des mondes.

Who is Guy Delcourt ?

Guy Delcourt is the founder of Edition Delcourt in 1986.

Interview with Guy Delcourt

Can you tell us about your first encounter with tribal art?

I have been interested in tribal art for a long time. The story goes back to the 1980s, when I lived a few steps from the Musée des Arts Africains et Océaniens in the Porte Dorée neighborhood of Paris, and the collections there enthralled me on many occasions. Later, I had the opportunity to admire exhibitions devoted to the arts of the Luba, Dogon, Fang and many other cultures at the Musée Dapper. My interest grew as a result of my travels to New York, Berlin and London, but I never imagined I would become a collector. I was undoubtedly intimidated by the enormous scope of this field and by the difficulties involved in making well-informed choices. It would ultimately be a fortuitous but fortunate incident that brought me around – a water leak! Because of it, I made the acquaintance of my neighbor Alain Person. Upon entering his place, I discovered the multitude of objects, minerals, and books he had collected over the course of his long career as an archeologist and researcher. He was extraordinarily kind and shared his knowledge and culture with me as he guided me through the building of my collection. Sadly, Alain died in December of 2019 in Djibouti while working on one of the assignments he loved so much.

You have been browsing the Parcours des Mondes’ galleries for a long time. What do you get from that?

The Parcours des Mondes plays an important role for me. I bought the first piece in my collection, a Konso post, there! As an aficionado, I find it to be an inexhaustible source of discoveries. As a collector, it is stimulating to see what tests my eye, and what my wishes and choices are. It is also a time to be together with others who share my love of tribal art, with whom I have the chance to develop relationships. And I’m also there as a neighbor, which makes it possible for me to come and go as I please. The Parcours makes a magnificent stroll through the magical 6^th arrondissement neighborhood.

What do you collect and what connection is there between comic book art, which is your professional field, the extra-European arts that you collect, and the art brut which you fervently admire?

I started by collecting certain original comic strip works, which is natural enough since it is a field I have had a passion for since adolescence and which I ultimately chose to make my career in. I came to tribal art, African art mainly, much later, and then to art brut. It happened spontaneously, without my being conscious of any specific connections between these three areas.

Upon reflection however, commonalities do indeed exist, to begin with the difficulty of recognizing the artistic value of creators who were initially seen as craftspeople, inventors or mentally deficient, depending on the cases.

Could you talk to us about one of the highlights in your collection that moves you particularly?

I think right away of the Senufo figure from the Marceau Rivière collection that I bought in June of 2019. The power of its lines, especially of the rectilinear back which seems to the product of a single gesture, and the gentleness of the facial traits, never cease to amaze me. Moreover, since I was abroad at the time, I was represented by my friend Alain at the auction, and that gives this acquisition a special emotional dimension…

I could also mention the Tsogho reliquary figure with its astounding expression that I acquired from the daughter of a collector who had become a friend, the magnificent Songye mask formerly in a Belgian collection, purchased at auction in Brussels on a Thalys excursion, or else the astonishingly modernistic Dan “walking stool”, of which only a few other examples are known to exist.