Ukrainians need to learn how to laugh at themselves, because healthy laugh, irony, sometimes even satire often help them to adequately assess the most problematic situations – modern caricaturists are sure of this, enabling us with the help of pencils and brushes to see “with our own eyes” the surrounding reality in a humorous way.
Recently Ukrainian capital has held the International Competition of Football Caricatures organized by the Association of Caricaturists of Ukraine. Overall, 172 artists from 39 countries of the world have taken part in it. Assessing the pictures dedicated to European football, quite topical these days, the jury of the competition with Dutch Peter Nieuwendijk at the helm (President of the Federation of European Cartoonists Organizations – FECO) evaluated 618 works and selected best 100 ones for publishing in the catalogue and future expositions.
According to the organizers of the competition, although caricature is called to teach us to laugh at ourselves, the emphasis in the works of the artists who took part in the competition was not on mocking at various misfortunes, rather it showed common comic situations, which could have happened or have happened with players and funs of “the game of millions.”
The list of winners includes well-known artists from Ukraine, Bulgaria, England, Serbia, Romania, and Germany. The grand prix of Independence went to the work by the caricaturist known to The Day’s readers as his pictures are frequent on the pages of our newspaper.
“Sadly, Ukrainian caricature is in higher demand abroad than in our own country. Many famous Ukrainian caricaturists are leading an active professional life beyond Ukraine: they work, win prizes at international competitions, take part in the exhibits etc.,” the winner of the competition Ihor LUKIANCHENKO told The Day. “Currently caricature is in far from the best condition. Because of the crisis certain decay of printed periodicals is taking place, including those eager to place caricatures on their pages. The Day, with which I have been cooperating for quite a while, is a pleasant exception in overall tendency. The Internet, ousting the printed press, is neither ready to pay the artists for this genre of figurative art. On the whole, caricaturists in Ukraine who earn their living by creative work, can be counted on the fingers of one hand. The idea to dedicate the competition to football is very interesting. For currently namely sport offers an opportunity to present Ukraine for the world community in a positive way.”
The head of the Association of Caricaturists of Ukraine Kostiantyn Kazanchev agrees that the press uses an insufficient number of caricatures.
“This should be a natural component of a newspaper, like photography,” he says, “On the whole, the school of Ukrainian caricature is formed according to the principle of Brownian motion [speaking about schools and streams, the winner of the grand prix of the competition Ihor Lukianchenko considers that he is a pupil of the genius caricaturist, who used to work in The Day in 1996 through 1998, Anatolii Kazansky. – Ed.], for the state does not need caricature whatsoever. At the same time namely Ukrainian caricaturists are the most original in the world. The President of the FECO Peter Nieuwendijk, during his recent visit to Ukraine, said that our country is among the top six better represented caricature streams in the world. Unlike European and Asian fellow artists, Ukrainians in my opinion have a subtler sense of humor. Its main distinction is in philosophy of depiction. In the football topic you can’t feel this boundary very well, however, when we held a competition of caricatures dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Chornobyl Tragedy, the works of Ukrainians were obviously more distinctive. Europeans in their approach to the topic applied mechanic humor, depicting fantastic horrors – fruit of their imagination. And ours used a more reasonable and subtle approach. ”
