An artist in motion: the local and the global on Sérgio Bonson’s comics stories (1974-2005)

Abstract

This paper proposal is to analyze comic books from a transnational perspective. Therefore, we chose as object of study the work of the Sérgio Bonson (1949-2005), an artist who worked in Florianópolis, SC, from 1974 to 2005. Draughtsman and watercolor artist, Bonson was author of numerous cartoons and comic books for newspapers and art exhibitions, he also developed contacts and transits at the national and international levels. The discussion turns on its focus to two sets of comic books: one, local, with characters from the city and the daily life in Florianópolis; and another global one, in which the artist presents himself as a character on a trip to France, entitled Impressions de France. Drawing on the analysis of these two series, we focus our attention on the artist’s transit between countries in America and Europe, and then perceive the transnational reverberations in his production, in order to identifying, on the one hand, articulations between local dimension and a widest element, the graphic humor, which refers to other times and places; on the other hand, in case of narratives with a transnational scale, highlight how the place is present through cultural translation and the experiences of present time