Fou-Fou

When I was working on this collection, my mother’s husband told me that I couldn’t leave Louis de Funès out.

When he told me this, I admit that I felt lost and right away I went to Google to search for said character. What was my surprise when I saw the first photo that the search engine threw: Louis de Funès dressed as a gendarme. It was then that I remembered having seen a movie of this hateful character many years ago, dubbed into Spanish, and that, obviously, had made me laugh out loud.

So I began to study the man and the talent. What a Franco-Spanish wonder this man was!

While de Funès is a national treasure in France, his talent also crossed language and geographic borders. He succeeded, in my opinion, due to the unrepeatable and fleeting gestures of him that just don’t need sound to make you laugh. Probably his admiration for some artists of the silent art made him the exceptional comedian that he was.

About de Funès, as a person, there are two fundamental characteristics to highlight:

The first is to do what makes us happy. While comedy is an indispensable film art form, many artists try to get out of it to feel consolidated as real and serious actors. De Funès was never interested in getting out of his career of making people laugh. He knew that his job of making people laugh was extremely serious work, especially when his portrayals of utterly obnoxious characters represented fantastic social criticism.

The second, that dreams do not have an expiration date. I don’t think that in the time of the war, as his fingers slid across the piano keyboard, de Funès thought that one day he would be a national hero in France, let alone that his name would echo in every corner of the world. At 50 years nof age, de Funès obtained the recognition that according to the social structure should be achieved around one’s 20s.

The latter is especially important to me. Perhaps de Funès did not imagine when starting his career that a Colombian artist would paint his portrait in her collection of world icons of comedy. Just as I did not imagine that in my thirties I was going to make painting my full-time job. It is never too late to do what makes us happy, nor to be recognized for the talent we have cultivated in the shadows.

“Fou-Fou” is a recognition of an ordinary man who did extraordinary things. Away from the projectors, he was an absolutely ordinary person, plain and simple. But when he was on stage, he was unique. De Funès, the man and the talent, are eternal.