A total of 62 people from all over Ukraine took part in the competition, whose results were announced in March. The topic of this year’s competition is freedom of expression, and peaceful gathering and association. The sketch authored by Ihor DUTKA from Kalush is perhaps the most relevant to us. We called Dutka to ask him a couple of questions, namely about what prompted him to draw this sarcastic caricature.
“In Soviet times there was a slogan: we are not slaves, slaves are not us,” Dutka recalls, “I have transformed this slogan in accordance with the current Ukrainian reality. Nowadays people have become very passive, everyone is living his own live, and very few people defend their interests, economic, social, and so on. Actually, the state of affairs in our society inspired me to draw this sketch. In these times when even Muslim peoples rebel, because they don’t want to be slaves, Ukrainians remain silent, even if they are driven to shambles.”
In your opinion, is drawing caricatures primarily opinion journalism or art?
“This is an optimum combination of both. Caricature is subtly highlighting one or another problem. I’ve been drawing caricatures since childhood. At the time I liked the journals Crocodile and Pepper. At first I simply copied some pictures from there.”
When did you take up caricature as an adult genre of reacting to the social-political realities?
“In a more mature age, when I was studying at Moscow’s Academy of Veterinary Medicine and Biotechnologies. I drew illustrations for various newspapers. At the time, 1981-85, I did not draw acute political caricatures though, but I made an emphasis on the life problems of that time.”
For example? What do you recall?
“In the 1980s corruption was for the first time revealed in the trade sphere, the head of the Yeliseevsky department store was executed. [Moscow’s Yeliseevsky was the best known grocery store in the USSR, where the state’s leaders bought produce. Yurii Sokolov headed this store for 10 years, between 1972 and 1982. Following Yuri Andropov’s order the Cheka arrested Sokolov under suspicion of taking part in illegal currency operations, and the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic condemned him to death. Sokolov was executed in late 1984. Historians claim the head of the store knew too much – Ed.] There were many resonant cases at the time. I started to create political sketches in the 1990s. At first I drew them only for my friends, later some Kalush newspapers published my sketches. Now I am working at the Customs Service.”
Do you create caricatures about the problems of the Customs Service?
“Only for our employees. I am a government employee.”
Whom do you consider your teachers?
“I like the works of Anatolii Vasylenko, who worked at Pepper. I’m especially fond of his style. For me his caricatures were a kind of model.”
How are caricatures faring as a genre? Does the media fully take advantage of them?
“The pressrun of the abovementioned Crocodile and Pepper was up to a million. Now the pressruns are low. I don’t think that people take less interest in caricature, it is simply that the periodicals have no financial possibilities to work with caricaturists.”
