PIERRE KROLL AND RUDY ETIENNE “ON FIRE!”

Rudy Etienne (Liège, 1970)
Liège all around me, 2025
Impression

Pierre Kroll (Gwaka - Congo, 1958)
400,000 years ago, the first extinguisher, 2025
Impression

Following the travelling exhibition “On Fire” that both the Liehrmann Gallery and the Opéra Royal de Wallonie hosted, the Liège Heritage Fund acquired two works signed by Belgian artists.

The “On Fire” exhibition, organised by the Burns Victims’ Foundation under the guidance of Rudy Etienne, puts the spotlight on the work of sixty emerging or nationally renowned artists whose challenge was to create a work based on a fire extinguisher. The profits generated by the sale of these one hundred and twelve works are entirely donated to the foundation.

Since the Liège Heritage Foundation is missioned with preserving and promoting Liège’s moveable and immovable heritage, it was only natural for it to support such an approach.

The first extinguisher is entitled “Liège all around me” and was created by Rudy Etienne. This Belgian artist was born in 1970, studied at the Liège Royal Fine Arts Academy and then went on to gain a qualification in illustration at Saint-Luc higher arts academy. He experiments with different styles and techniques but has a special link with comics and cinema. He adapts his approach depending on the media he uses and the subjects he addresses. As a scriptwriter and author, his illustrations reflect his passions as well as his taste for directing. He uses a wide range of techniques, such as Indian ink, pencil, felt-tip pen or also drawing using a graphics tablet and meticulously studies his subjects, both in terms of their aesthetic and symbolic value.

“Liège all around me” features the Ardent City as a landscape suspended between the sky and land, where imagination is combined with reality, in a work that is an invitation to discovery and wonder.

The second extinguisher is called “400,000 years ago, the first extinguisher” and was created by Pierre Kroll.
    
Pierre Kroll is a leading Belgian cartoonist and was born in 1958 in the Congo. He trained as an Architect and also holds a degree in environmental science. In 1985, he became a freelance illustrator. He is the regular cartoonist for the newspaper Le Soir and weekly magazine Ciné-Télé-Revue. For thirty years, he has carried out live drawings for televised political debates. Since 1995, each year, he publishes an annual of his drawings and, since 2015, he talks about his profession in a comedy show. He regularly draws for the ARTE channel on the programme “28 minutes”. His most well-known drawings are most certainly the ones in black and white published every day in Le Soir, to mark a news item, a date or an event. The Grand Curtius is devoted an exhibition to him called “Kroll lance des bouteilles à la mer” (Kroll’s messages in a bottle) which came to a close on 19th January 2025.

With “400,000 years ago, the first extinguisher”, the artist found it amusing to imagine that one day, 400,000 years ago, while one prehistoric man was trying to invent fire, another was simultaneously trying to develop the fire extinguisher.

Grégory Desauvage
Curator – Fine Arts Museum / La Boverie

Exhibition location
The artefacts are visible in the object of the month showcase in the entrance hall of the Grand Curtius Museum in Liège.

Captions for visuals – Copyright: City of Liège - Grand Curtius.

Musée de Liège