Cartoons

For the Leiden student newspaper Forum Academiale, I created a series of cartoons in the late 1950s that express my enthusiasm for jazz. Jazz, celebration, and the joy of improvisation come together in these works.

Little figures in slim trousers, black sweaters, and sandals—a nod to Parisian existentialism—move through the scenes. Brass players dance and contort themselves into strange shapes. One musician blows abstract forms, inspired by the Parisian school of painting, while another moves to the rhythm of a Cubist painting.

The absurd humor and the celebration of form that resonate in these drawings foreshadow the surreal, and absurd scenes of my later posters.