Graphis Nov./Dec. 1958 [antikvár]

llJcuitchct Toi: Sciic 472I [Tcjtc fr»nç»i»: pige í7vI • Ronald Searle,born in 1920 in Cambridge, England, had an acadcmic training in (he Art School there. W hen 21 and while serving in the army, he was capturcd and spent nearly four years in Japanese prisoncr*of*\x-ar camps. Sincc his return to England in 194s, he has made innumerable drawings for books, for advcnising. films and for the weekly, punch. He is to-day the best known of contemperar)' British cartoonists. Editor • Ronald Searle, 1920 in Cambridge, England, geboren, erhielt an der dortigen Kunstschule eine gründliche Ausbildung. AJs 2ijâhriger Soldat geriet er in Kriegsgefangenschaft und verbrachte nahezu vier Jahre in !apanischen Gefangenen-La gem. Seit seiner Rückkehr nach England, 194;, entstanden zahllose Zeichnungen für Buchillustrationen, zu Werbezwecken, für den Film und für die vi ochenschrift pl'nch, die ihn zum bekanntesten britischen Karikaturisten unsererZeit gemacht haben. Rtd. • Ronald Searle est n? i Cambridge, Angleterre, en 1920, et a fait de sérieuses études académiques a l'ecole d'an de sa ville natale. Il avait zi ans lorsque, mobilisé dans l'armée britannique. Il fut fait prisonnier par les Japonais, et il a passe pres de quatre ans en captivité. Depuis son retour en Angleterre en 1945, il a réalisé d'innombrables dessins et il est aujourd'hui le caricaturiste britannique le plus célebre de notre époque, Rédaction Hans Pßug: J y Ronald Searle is a product of the Second World War and one of the most astonishing phenomena of the post-war period. His first cartoon admittedly appeared in 1955 in the CAMURiDGE DAILY NEWS, when he was fifteen, and by the time he was called up at the outbreak of war he was, as his sketches from Cape Town and Mombasa prove, a gifted and skilful draughtsman. But that might well have been the end of the story had the young artist not taken part in the defence of Malaya in January 1942 and been captured by the Japanese in the following month. For the rest of the war, three and a half years in all, Searle was in the hands of the Japanese. He spent part of the time in prison, part in helping to build the Burma Railway. A long succession of war books and films have described to us just what that means. One of the most moving and harrowing documents on the subject we owe to Searle himself: a slim booklet that appeared a vear after the end of the war and contains a very small selection of his camp drawings. Though its actual title is simply For/y Drawings, it might justifiably have been called 'A Glimpse of Hell' or something ofthe sort. While it would be an inadmissible over-simplification to explain the attitude, subject-matter and stvle of this artist purely in terms of his war experiences, the fact remains that they had a decisive influence on his character, on his way of seeing and portraying the world and its inhabitants. Equally important, however, is that Searle, when he returned to L--ngland in October 1945, found a public that had experienced the war at first hand, whether on the front or in the bomb-battered homeland: a public that, in the years of blood, sweat and tears, had undergone a deep transformation. The English had learnt to care less not only about danger and death but also about manv other things that had been counted among their most precious possessions before 1959. The prevailing sceptical outlook often bordered on cynicism and was echoed in the unadorned idiom spoken in the army. In addition to all this, the homecoming soldier found a social order which had been shaken to its foundations, and in which there thrived a whole range of characters that had not existed before and seemed as though created for the satirical pen: black market dealers, existentialists, spivs and teddy-boys. In a word, the situation was more opportune than ever before for someone who was determined to break down the taboos of an outdated society and who had the ability to capture on paper the human fauna driven into the open by the compulsions of war. 470