It’s probably no real reach to associate a long-running endurance motor race in the French countryside with art. Motorsport events often included wonderfully illustrated promotional posters and, certainly in Le Mans, the tradition continues year after year with a handsome event poster. Expanding upon that is a challenge by race organizers to artists.

Now in its second year, a tradition quickly gaining momentum is a challenge to illustrators whereby they interpret the race through their own work. This year the selection included women both experienced and also up-and-coming in their field to take on the subject of 24-hour racing. Not surprisingly, the results are both highly creative and highly diverse.

PRESS RELEASE: 24 Illustrators’ Take on the Le Mans 24 Hours Poster
[source: LeMans.org]

For the second year running 24 well-known illustrators have designed their own posters of the famous Sarthe race. It’s additional proof of the close links forged between the Le Mans 24 Hours and the world of art.

Since the first staging of the Le Mans 24 Hours in 1923 the event’s poster has synthesized at a glance the promises of the forthcoming race. Over the years it has evolved in keeping with fashions, artistic currents, the international situation and today it represents a rich pictorial heritage. It’s become an original creative medium which, last year, led to an innovative artistic initiative called the 24 Hours in posters. In parallel to the official poster 24 illustrators were asked to give their own vision of the race, and this year the result is another eye-catching display to say the least!

The idea for the 24 Hours in posters was the fruit of the imagination of four people from Le Mans, Hubert Poirot-Bourdain, Benoît Goupil de Bouillé, Thomas de Galard and Juliette Charon who were looking for an event to bring the race into the heart of the town, whereas it’s more often the heart of the town that moves out to the circuit! By displaying the works of the illustrators in the streets of Le Mans this unifying project offers the inhabitants and passers-by an accessible high-quality artistic experience. It also plays with what may seem a priori to be contradictory values, but in the end they enrich one another as the artistic universe, which has an elitist touch about it, depicts a popular sporting subject aimed at the general public. Finally, this initiative breathes new life into the long tradition of the hand-drawn poster that has been eclipsed by computer creations. For the ACO and its president Pierre Fillon, the 24 Hours in posters shows yet again, “the close links which unite the Le Mans 24 Hours and the artistic milieu. Since the creation of the event in 1923 these two universes which, by nature, seem very distant from each other have never stopped crossing paths to pay each other a kind of mutual homage.” 

The 2017 selection calls on illustrators from all kinds of horizons. They comprise men and women who are either already well known or who are in the process of making a name for themselves as either comic strip artists or illustrators for children’s books: they each have their own profile that shapes the way in which they portray the Le Mans 24 Hours. Thanks to the backing of the ACO, Motul, the town of Le Mans and the Sarthe department their works will be on display in the streets of Le Mans from 1st to 21st June 2017 and at the circuit during the Le Mans 24 Hours. A must-see open-air exhibition!

The illustrators of the 24 Hours in posters 2017 

Vahram Muratyan Alain Pilon Amandine Maas
Stéphane Trapier Idir Davaine Camille Louzon
Adrien Parlange Lucile Piketty Loustal
Blexbolex Julie Guillem Emmanuel Pierre
Junko Nakamura Juliette Ferrand Geng Quentin Bidaud
Amélie Fontaine Elisa Gehin Hubert Poirot-Bourdain
Jochen Gerner Juliette Mancini Anne Hélène Dubray
Marie Bonnin Aurore Petit Hubert Van Rie

Plus d’informations
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