Satirical Cartoons Display Global Problems

Courtesy Pawel Kuczynski

Polish illustrator Pawel Kuczynski needs little else in the way of inspiration for his satirical drawings than to take a look at the twisted world around him. “I like to observe people and their relationships,” he said in an interview with Fluster Magazine. “I just observe reality. I put this information in my head…and I wait for the results. In our time, it's very easy.”

The results he speaks of are wonderfully simple, provocative cartoons laying plain many of the global problems that plague our world, and are getting worse over time—corruption, poverty, social inequality, isolation, war, environmental distress, political greed, hunger, addiction…the list goes on. “I like [to] draw about these themes because they are immortal and timeless as the art,” Kuczynski says.

Dollar

Gloomy as his creations may be, the frankness they share has resonated with the public, especially on the internet, where Kuczynski’s works are shared widely and often. The illustrations each take around two days to complete, he says, and often share a dramatic, dusk-like color palette, which he attributes to his fondness for Caravaggio and other baroque art. Kuczynski uses watercolors, color pencils, and ecoline on paper for his drawings, often leaving them unnamed and letting the images speak for themselves, or giving them matter-of-fact, one-word titles, like “Office.”

Office

Though Kuczynski concedes that mankind keeps making the same mistakes, he’s decidedly hopeful about his audience’s takeaway from his art. And his audience is everyone. “I am not a messenger and I don’t want to change people,” he said to AUC Times Magazine. “I’m happy when people like my work and when they find some important ideas…and, after this, they begin to think about change themselves.”

Love

Images courtesy Pawel Kuczynski