'La Vache de Quattres'.
Gérard Deuquet was a French-born Belgian painter, who began his career assisting the comic artist Peyo on his 'Smurfs' stories. He additionally drew various one-shot educational comics for Spirou. His entire comic output is concentrated in the year 1960. Afterwards, he devoted the rest of his career to painting and the niche magazine Kadath, about ancient civilizations.
Early life
Gérard Deuquet was born in 1936 in Charleville, France, but later settled in Brussels, Belgium. At 18, he chose Belgian nationality. In 1958, Deuquet graduated from the La Cambre National School of Visual Arts in Brussels.
Work in comics
In 1960, Deuquet was an apprentice at the publishing house Dupuis, where he was assigned to relieve the comic creator Peyo from his heavy workload for Spirou magazine. The artist had recently introduced his famous Smurfs in one of his 'Johan et Pirlouit' stories, and was now assigned to make special stories with these creatures for Spirou's fold-in mini-booklets section. Deuquet joined Peyo in his home studio in Uccle, and was responsible for the backgrounds and lettering of the mini-book 'L'Oeuf et les Schtroumpfs', which appeared in Spirou issue #1147 (7 April 1960). The young artist went down in history as the first in a long line of apprentices who were trained at Studio Peyo, and was succeeded in the next couple of years by Francis, Gos and Walthéry.
Under the pen name Géday, Deuquet has also created four mini-books by himself. The first was 'Mach 10' in issue #1136 (21 January 1960), an educational story about aviation. 'Le Grand Paradis' (issue #1140, 18 February 1960) was a historical naval story, while 'Prélude au Cosmos' (issue #1161, 14 July 1960) was an educational feature about space travel. His final mini-book, 'La Vache de Quattres' (issue #1163, 28 July 1960), was a story inspired by the Trojan legend.
'Prélude au Cosmos' and 'Le Grand Paradis'. Dutch-language version.
Later work, final years and death
Deuquet's career in comics was limited to the year 1960. He became a painter, and also taught painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Charleroi. One of his students during the early 1980s was the former comic creator Marcel Denis, who had dropped his activities as a comic artist in 1971. With Ivan Verheyden, Deuquet also launched Kadath, a magazine about lost civilizations. The first issue appeared in March 1973, and the project lasted 40 years and 107 issues.
Gérard Dequet passed away in 2024, at age 87.
Issues of Kadath.