Political Passions: Exquisite Illustrations

Political Cartoonist Dept: That is a charged and prestigious category in Europe, particularly eastern Europe, where political discussions during most of the 20th century were coded rather than straightforward. This was especially true during the Soviet era when cartoonists, like playwrights, were significant figures; they had a limited licence to express dangerous thoughts. They were expected to both represent and defuse political passions, according to The Star. He brought to Toronto with him another European tendency as well, which you could call the intellectual style in drawing. In modern Europe, debates over ideas were often at the heart of political clashes, and editorial cartoonists never shied away from attempts to find pictorial equivalents for those complex ideas. They didn't simply focus on leaders and events .. and in 1993, when Dusan Petricic came to Toronto from Belgrade in what is now always called the former Yugoslavia, he was generally seen as its leading political cartoonist. Dusan was viewed there as an artist, not a mere cartoonist, which is also part of the European tradition. One thinks immediately of Daumier, who painted, sculpted and made prints, alongside his indelible cartoons and caricatures. Dusan specialized, and still does, in exquisite illustrations of children's books. The time when he chose to move his work and his family to Canada coincided with the beginning of an ominous, and in many ways odious, decade in the Balkans. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.