Ironic caricatures of an officer from St. Petersburg, which allow you to look at life from a different angle

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It has long become a habit that cartoons carry the negative side of something. However, the works of St. Petersburg self-taught artist Andrey Popov, one of the most original and interesting cartoonists of modern Russia, are completely different. Although they are sometimes bitter parodies of our life, they turn even its tragic sides into funny ones. They can be called rather life sketches, saturated with love for people and life in all its manifestations, however, sometimes with an admixture of light irony. Well, what about without her …

The life and creative path of Andrei Popov is an amazing story about how a person not only abruptly changed the previously chosen path, but also succeeded in a new one. This is a story about how a hereditary military man who spent many years studying at the Military Engineering Space Institute, dreamed of astronautics, stopped abruptly, remembering what he once learned in a children's art studio and became a cartoonist. With his vision of the world, sometimes from a very unusual angle, Andrei's creative approach masterfully varies from everyday topics to surrealistic subjects, carefully sliding along the line between humorous and romantic. He speaks of himself as an unprofessional artist who has taken up caricature under the influence of his classmate in a children's art studio.

About the cartoonist

Andrey Popov was born on February 13, 1970 in Tashkent, in the family of a military man. He began to draw from early childhood. Parents, seeing good inclinations in the boy, took him to an art studio. Andrei still remembers the words of his first mentor Yakov Lvovich Frumgarts. And it, according to the teacher, consisted in the child's ability to convey emotion, mood, and also open the door to the world created only by him. Therefore, in the studio, complete freedom of choice, imagination was encouraged, and the academic elements of teaching composition and perspective were introduced unobtrusively, as if by the way.

In the same group with Popov, the boy Zhenya Vorobyov studied, who stood out very much against the background of other guys for his artistic talent, especially in the genre of caricature. And Andrei, looking at his humorous, amusing drawings, seriously caught fire with a caricature.

However, after school, Andrei, at the call of his heart, entered the Military Space Engineering Institute. A. F. Mozhaisky. And already there Andrei began to draw life sketches from the life of fellow students, and later from the army life, shading them with notes of humor and irony. In 1992, Popov graduated from the university, then he served in the army for three years, where he also drew a lot in his free time, especially cartoons on colleagues, and secretly on the highest command staff.

And when one day a self-taught caricaturist was caught on a hot spot (friends multiplied a cartoon of the commander and one of the copies fell into his hands), Popov was summoned "on the carpet" taking into account military ethics and in the case.

Having retired from the armed forces with the rank of senior lieutenant, Andrei remained in St. Petersburg and decided to try himself in the profession of a cartoonist illustrator. He got a job in the newspaper "Delovoy Peterburg" and began to illustrate the news, and quite successfully. For 10 years he drew cartoons for this periodical, until the concept changed in it. The newspaper stopped illustrating materials in this format. The caricature, like a poignant satire, was pushed far away. Few of the higher echelon of power liked the personified satire in the form of illustrations on top officials. However, Andrei Popov's art did not end there - it was only a start on the career ladder of the future master of modern caricature and "gag".

About cartoons by Andrey Popov

However, the tendencies in the perception of cartoons by the viewer have also changed in modern society as a whole. For example, in the Russian Internet space, caricatures are still "breathing" freely, because they have radically changed their guidelines. Many still remember how the caricature was an evil satire, personifying the struggle against the vices of power and the system. And now nobody needs it. Now the caricature with a "gag" is perceived with a bang, which should make me laugh. And when the viewer enters the cartoon site, he expects to laugh heartily. (For reference: a gag (from the English gag) is a joke or a comic episode, which is based on obvious absurdity).

Curiously, the artist Andrei Popov not only kindly ridicules the vices of society in his cartoons and ironically refers to the oddities and contradictions of situations. In his "gags" he looks, as they say, at the root and seeks that eternal and philosophical, which permeates the world. He sees everyday life from a special perspective, and then "tells" the viewer about it, from the point of view of a creative and philosophical person.

- says Andrey Popov about his work. -

In addition, Popov believes that a caricature should not be ugly:

In our early publication In every joke, just a fraction of a joke: Cartoons about the modern world and people in it - you can see more humorous works of the cartoonist Andrei Popov.