Ronald Searle

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Ronald Searle , CBE , actually Ronald William Fordham Searle (born March 3, 1920 in Cambridge ; † December 30, 2011 in Draguignan , France), was a British draftsman , caricaturist and medalist who combined black humor with “lovable charm” knew. His most famous works include the cartoons about the malicious pupils of St. Trinian's boarding school for girls . In the professional world, Searle is counted among the most important contemporary draftsmen. Friedrich Dürrenmatt called him a " Jonathan Swift on the pen". Searle valued cats and champagne, but hated war and power politics.

Life

Self-portrait in July 1943 in Thailand

The son of a station porter began to draw at the age of five. He published his first cartoons at the age of 15 in the Cambridge Daily News . After school and a time as a laborer, he attended an art school for two years before being drafted in 1939. Stationed as a British soldier in Singapore from January 1942 , Searle soon fell into Japanese captivity. He was used under miserable conditions in the construction of the Siam-Burma Railway (Death Railway) , which is known to many from the bridge on the Kwai . After four years of imprisonment and his return, Searle settled in London as a freelance artist. He also managed to publish some of the drawings he had made while a prisoner of war. In 1947 he married his first wife, the journalist Kaye Webb. With her he became the father of twins. In the late 1940s, he traveled through Europe, America and North Africa. Searle has meanwhile worked for renowned newspapers such as News Chronicle , Punch , The New Yorker , Life , Holiday , The New York Times , Le Monde and Spiegel . His first book with cartoons from St. Trinian's was published in 1948. Several films were made on the basis of these cartoons, starting with The Beauties of St. Trinians from 1954.

From 1961 Searle lived in Paris , where he married his second wife, Monica Koenig, who was also a visual artist. Since 1977 he has lived on tour in the south of France.

The artist Searle also dealt with painting , coin design and cartoons . The animated film sequences for the feature film The daredevil men in their flying boxes come from his pen. Searle died honored and very old in 2011; he was 91 years old. A year earlier he had already sold his artistic legacy to the Lower Saxony Foundation , so that more than 2000 drawings by the master are on permanent loan in the Hanoverian Museum Wilhelm Busch . Later the estate also arrived in Hanover. Searle donated all the drawings rescued from captivity to the Imperial War Museum in London . The complete series of the picture story The Rake's Progress based on the model of William Hogarth is in the printing and drawing department of the British Museum in London .

To create

Searle wasn't just happy with his hugely successful St. Trinian's girls. He found himself squeezed into a drawer that was much too narrow. In 1953, his resentment even led him to personally discontinue the series in a rarely drastic way by causing an atomic explosion in the physics room of the school he invented. Nevertheless, several film adaptations followed. While the Trinian's series was barely 50 sheets, Searle's oeuvre includes "tens of thousands of drawings in all genres that were created for the most illustrious customers," says Andreas Platthaus. For him, Searle is “comparable to Picasso in terms of the variety of themes and styles” - and “yet recognizable in every picture”. The Brockhaus Encyclopedia speaks of a peculiar line that appears "bizarre" and "nervous" at the same time. George Grosz was one of Searle's role models . Searle's work, in turn, had a major impact on colleagues. According to Craig Brown, u. a. Gerald Scarfe , Posy Simmonds, and the inventor of the Simpsons , Matt Groening , they owed a lot to Searle. His younger colleague Steve Bell even described him in 2010 as the "greatest living cartoonist". Platthaus quoted the then 90-year-old former prisoner of war, who was still drawing daily, as saying:

“The prerequisite for all art is a good technical education. When you have that, you are free to do whatever you want with it. And freedom, that's what matters. "

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1965 Bremen
  • 1996 Hanover, Wilhelm-Busch - German Museum for Caricature and the Art of Drawing
  • 1996 Saarlouis, Haus Ludwig for art exhibitions
  • 1996–1997 Munich, City Museum
  • 2010 Ronald Searle on his 90th birthday , Wilhelm-Busch - German Museum for Caricature and Drawing, Hanover

Awards

literature

  • Henning Bock and Pierre Dehaye (eds.): Ronald Searle , Rowohlt Verlag 1978
  • Russell Davies: Ronald Searle: A Biography , 1990
  • Gisela Vetter-Liebenow (Ed.): Ronald Searle. Hirmer Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-7774-6970-X . Catalog of the exhibitions in Hanover, Saarlouis and Munich
  • Catalog Général illustré des Éditions de la Monnaie de Paris. Volume 4.3 de 1945 à nos jours (P – Z), pages 1699 to 1705. (14 medals on painters and caricaturists and one self-portrait; inter alia on Wilhelm Busch, Otto Dix, George Grosz and Watteau)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ FAZ according to Diogenes-Verlag , accessed on June 13, 2012
  2. ↑ These picture stories were made into films several times, initially in 1954 by Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat with Alastair Sim in the lead role. In 2007, Die Girls von St. Trinian, a remake that was a great success with the public, was released.
  3. ↑ a b c Andreas Platthaus, FAZ March 3, 2010 , accessed on June 13, 2012
  4. ↑ a b Spiegel online January 3, 2012 , accessed June 13, 2012
  5. ↑ a b c Steve Bell, Guardian, March 9, 2010 , accessed June 13, 2012
  6. ↑ This decision by the artist to keep all of his estate in Hanover caused a lack of understanding in London. See Uwe Janssen: The Ronald Searle Museum , in: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of February 27, 2010, page 7
  7. ↑ Caricature Museum ( Memento of the original from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 13, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.karierter-museum.de
  8. ↑ 19th edition, Volume 20 from 1993, page 16
  9. ↑ mail online June 8, 2010 , accessed June 13, 2012

Web links

Commons : Ronald Searle  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Searle, Ronald
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Searle, Ronald William Fordham (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English draftsman and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Cambridge
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 2011
Place of death Draguignan