Mandrill

Barly Baruti is a Congolese comics author artist, and probably the best-known African comic artist in Europe. He was born into a family of painters as Baruti Kandolo Lilela in Kisangani. He was working at the graphics departments of French cultural centres in Kisingani and Kinshasa, when he made 'Le Temps d'Agir' in 1982. This first comic book in commission, dealing with environmental issues, was followed by other similar works, like 'Le Village des Ventrus' and 'Aube Nouvelle à Mobo'. During the same period, he was invited by Michel Pierre, literary director of the French publisher Casterman, for an apprenticeship in Angoulême. Baruti, who had been living in Belgium since 1992, also started publishing his work in French-Belgian reviews like Le Soir, Tam Tam, Zaïre Magazine, Autrement, Belgian Economic Journal and Nyota Ya Afrika. He changed his semi-realistic Clear Line style for a more realistic one, when he started working with scriptwriter Frank Giroud on the comics trilogy 'Éva K' (Soleil, 1995-1998) and the thriller series 'Mandrill' (Glénat, 1998-2007). He has been working with Alain Brezault on a sci-fi comics series set in Africa and the Orient, called 'La Monde selon Agbo'. He made the drawings for 'Madame Livingstone', a graphic novel set in Central-Africa during World War I. It was written by Christophe Cassiau-Haurie and published by Glénat in 2014.