Book Description

In the early years of the 20th century, the brilliant Norwegian cartoonist Olaf Gulbransson was headhunted by the legendary German magazine Simplicissimus. Thus began one of the great international collaborations, as Gulbransson moved to Bavaria for a decades-long stint as one of the greatest contributors to one of the greatest satirical magazines of all time. A century later, the Norwegian cartoonists Lars Fiske and Steffen Kverneland, enthralled by the genius of Gulbransson s drawings, fascinated by his eccentric existence (a mostly gentle, nature-loving giant who could crack walnuts with his buttocks, and whose favored method of dress was an apron and nothing else), and dismayed by the degree to which he d fallen into oblivion in his native Norway, set out to document his life and art with this hilarious, incisive, informative and ultimately touching work of comics journalism. Traveling to museums, historical locations, and Gulbransson s own former haunts, speaking with relatives, fueled by beer, cigarettes and pork (we are in Germany, after all), dodging German soccer fans, Fiske and Kverneland bring to life a supremely colorful figure in the history of cartooning: Freely mixing Fiske s eye-popping clear-line cubism with Kverneland s virtuoso multi-media caricatures, punctuated by the occasional photograph and many stunning examples of Gulbransson s own elegant, ultra-minimalist drawings, every page of Olaf G.: A Life in Pictures is a treat for the eyes and the brain."