With À tire-d’aile. Anna Sommer in regard of the collections, the Musée Tomi Ungerer becomes the first French institution to host a solo exhibition by Anna Sommer. She won the 2024 Max and Moritz Prize for Best German-Speaking Comic Artist.
Down the decades, Swiss artist Anna Sommer (born in Staffelbach in 1968) has developed her own distinct style of visual storytelling. From collage portraits to short illustrated stories, from inked comic books to humorous etchings, her work is constantly puncturing the superficial appearance of things for a moment – telling a joke, evoking unease, opening up a new level of meaning. She dissects our human relationships, romantic tribulations, desires, roles and identities with the same precision with which she uses her paper cutter to create large, colourful collages.
For this ‘carte blanche’ exhibition, Sommer carefully studied the museum’s collection and the works of Tomi Ungerer, which she has displayed in dialogue with her own works. Sommer also sought out drawings by other artists – Tomi Ungerer and Borislav Sajtinac from the collection of the Musée Tomi Ungerer, Marcelle Cahn and Käthe Kollwitz from the collection of the Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Toshusaï Sharaku and Kitagawa Utamaro from the collection of the Cabinet des Estampes et des Dessins – that display a narrative, formal or poetic affinity with her own work. With this knowingly subjective artistic gaze, the exhibition affirms the many points of connection between works of different genres, styles and periods.
Her books have been published in France ever since her debut (L’Association, Les Cahiers dessinés, Actes Sud) and her work has featured in numerous festivals and exhibitions (including La bande dessinée au Musée and Bande dessinée 1964–2024 at the Pompidou Centre in 2024). As part of the Illustrer le Grand Paris project, she produced a mural for the Gare Le Blanc-Mesnil (2025). This exhibition also provides an opportunity to expand the Tomi Ungerer Museum’s collections with works by Anna Sommer (donated by the artist and acquired by the museum).
Curator: Anna Sailer, curator of the Musée Tomi Ungerer – Centre international de l’Illustration
With the support of the Consulat général de Suisse, Strasbourg
