New York sur Charente Mural, Angoulême

With this fresco, Nicolas de Crécy delivered an element of Volume III of his Celestial Bibendum. This work 33 meters high and 9.20 meters wide is an evocation of the many Charentais who passed across the Atlantic, especially in Quebec.
For visitors and residents, the building has become a vessel and one expects at any time to hear the sirens of the cargo ships leaving the port, a reminder of the voyage of Verrazano who in the 16th century, docked the coasts of the Americas and baptized the first bay called “Nouvelle Angoulême”.

In 1982, the Ministry of Culture, under the leadership of Jack Lang, launched the "Walls in France" operation, which consisted of having 13 painted walls created in 13 cities in France by 13 different artists. In Angoulême, it was the Icelandic artist Erró who created a huge mural representing a multitude of comic book characters (Batman, Tarzan, Tintin, etc.). Abandoned for years, the mural was renovated in 2013. It is now considered the first painted wall in Angoulême.It was during the 90s that the production of painted walls accelerated, driven by a municipal policy called the "painted walls program". The aim was to show that Angoulême is indeed the "international capital of the ninth art" (comics).In 2021, we can admire 27 painted walls, as well as the whole that covers the building of the departmental archives of Charente.In 2001, it was the designer Nicolas de Crécy who proposed "New York on Charente".