Andrzej Krauze was born in a village suburb of Warsaw, Poland on 7 March 1947. He studied at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts between 1967 and 1973. Arriving in London under political asylum in 1982, Krauze is known for his satirical illustrations for many UK newspapers and magazines.
Cartoonist, illustrator, poster designer and satirist Andrzej Krauze was born in Dawidy Bankowe, a village suburb of Warsaw, Poland on 7 March 1947. Despite having no artistic tradition in the family, Krauze grew up loving drawing, and later studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Warsaw between 1967 and 1973, where he began contributing cartoons to the satirical magazine Szpilki and won first prize in a poster competition held by the Polish National Theatre. Subsequently, his animated film and diploma submission, The Flying Lesson, was immediately censored. Between 1974 and 1979 he produced drawings for the weekly Polish newspaper Kultura which ‘infuriated the communist censors’ (Wheen, 2003), after which he first attempted to move permanently to London in 1979. After a year in the UK, and the extension for his visa refused, Krauze worked for a newspaper in Amsterdam in 1980, followed by a period in Paris working for L'Express, L'Expansion, Lire and L'Alternative in 1981. The same year, Martial Law was introduced in Poland, inspiring Krauze to produce political satires about his homeland, contributing to the newly-established, Poland-based Solidarity Weekly. 1981 also saw a collection of the resulting political cartoons, Andrzej Krauze’s Poland, published by Nina Karsov, London. Krauze was then offered political asylum in the UK in 1982, where he settled permanently in London.
Krauze’s work began to appear regularly in UK publications from 1982, first shown in New Society and New Statesman. In 1985, he illustrated Patrick Wright’s On Living in an Old Country, which introduced his ‘Mr. Pen’ character, addressing the rise of ‘heritage’ that emerged from the political rhetoric of the times, and explored ‘the relations between the idea of an imperilled national identity and the transformation of British society introduced by Margaret Thatcher’ (Wright, 1985). Establishing a recognisable style of allegorical, fabulous, symbolic and sometimes frightening imagery, as well as his hallmark use of black ink, bold lines and cross-hatching, Krauze gained traction and recognisability in the UK. In particular, 1987 marked a significant moment of professional success: he began a three-year association with The Old Vic Theatre in Waterloo, London, under the directorship of Jonathan Miller, for whom he produced many posters for plays. He also started regularly contributing to The Times, The Listener, New Scientist and Campaign, and held his first solo show at Woodstock Gallery, London.
Well-established as a satirist in London, Krauze began working at the Guardian in 1989, which ‘turned out to be his natural home’, his illustrations reflecting and enhancing ‘the paper’s enduring, distinctive characteristics’ (Wheen, 2003). The following year, his drawings began to appear in other newspapers and magazines, including The Independent on Sunday, Demos Quarterly, The Sunday Telegraph and Modern Painters. Krauze won the Victoria and Albert Museum’s award for illustration in 1996, the year in which he illustrated Lloyd Spencer’s Hegel for Beginners (followed by Spencer’s The Enlightenment for Beginners in 1997). In 1998, he designed a series of posters for the British Council and held a solo show at Simon Capstick-Dale Fine Art Ltd in London. In 2001, Krauze designed a further 12 posters for the British Council, all relating to citizenship and human rights, and in 2003 was awarded the Ranan Lurie Political Cartoon Award, granted to the best political cartoons reflecting the spirit and principles of the United Nations. The same year, he held a retrospective exhibition, Andrzej Krauze: Drawings 1970-2003, at the Guardian Newsroom in London. Further group exhibitions included Propaganda, Power and Persuasion at the British Library in 2013 and the Art Out of the Bloodlands: A Century of Polish Artists in Britain, held at Ben Uri Gallery and Museum in 2017.
Following major heart surgery in the late 2010s, Krauze stopped drawing, instead focussing on paper-cut works (a traditional Polish artform), inspired by a new character, 'Mr Scalpel', resulting in the 2020 exhibition at London Printworks. Andrej Krauze lives and works in London, and his works are held by UK public collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum. In 2020 his son Gabriel Krauze was long-listed for the Booker Prize for his autobiographical novel Who They Was.
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Andrzej Krauze]
Publications related to [Andrzej Krauze] in the Ben Uri Library