Kevin Kallaugher

Kevin Kallaugher (born March 23, 1955, Norwalk, Connecticut) is a political cartoonist for "The Economist" and the former cartoonist for the "Baltimore Sun". He is known as KAL at "The Economist".

Editorial cartoon career

Kallaugher graduated from Harvard College with honors in Visual and Environmental Studies in 1977. He then embarked on a bicycle tour of the British Isles, where he joined the Brighton Basketball Club as a player and coach. After the club hit financial difficulties, Kallaugher drew caricatures of tourists in Trafalgar Square and on Brighton Pier. In March 1978, "The Economist" recruited him to become their first resident cartoonist in their then 135-year history.

A picture of Indira Gandhi by Kal ( [http://media.economist.com/images/webonly/01Brezandghandi.jpgseen here on the right side] ) was considered offensive by Indian authorities in 1984, leading to the destruction of the printed editions of the newspaper in the country.

Kallaugher spent the next 10 years working in London as a cartoonist for such publications as "The Observer", "The Sunday Telegraph", Today and "The Mail on Sunday".

Kallaugher returned to the U.S. in 1988 to join "The Baltimore Sun" as its editorial cartoonist. Over the course of his 17 years at the newspaper, he drew over 4000 cartoons for "The Sun" while continuing to draw two cartoons per week for "The Economist". Kallaugher's work for "The Economist" includes over 100 illustrated covers.

In 1995, Kallaugher was invited by the Walters Art Museum to help curate the celebrated exhibit "Worth a Thousand Words: A Picture of Contemporary Political Satire". In 2006, the Walters mounted a major retrospective exhibition of Kallaugher's cartoons titled "Mightier than The Sword; The Satirical Pen of KAL". Kallaugher's work has also been exhibited at the Tate Gallery in London and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. He has had one-man exhibitions in London, New York City, Washington, D.C., and Baltimore.

Syndication

KAL's work for "The Sun" and "The Economist" has appeared in more than 100 publications worldwide, including "Le Monde", "Der Spiegel", "Pravda", "Krokodil", "Daily Yomiuri", The Australian, The International Herald Tribune, The Washington Post, "The New York Times", "The New Yorker", "Time", "Newsweek" and U.S. News and World Report. His cartoons are distributed worldwide by Cartoonarts International and the "New York Times" Syndicate.

Awards

Kallaugher has won many awards for his work including the 2005 Nast Prize as presented by the town of Landau, Germany. In 2004 he won the Gillray Goblet for Cartoon of the Year as presented by the Political Cartoon Society of Great Britain. In 1999, 2002 and 2005 he won the Thomas Nast Award presented by the Overseas Press Club of America, and in 2002 he was awarded the Berryman award presented by the National Press Foundation. In 1996 he won the Grafica Internazionale Award at the International Festival of Satire in Pisa, Italy. In 1990 he was awarded the award for Best Editorial Cartoon at the Witty World International Cartoon Festival in Budapest, Hungary and the 1982 Feature Cartoonist of the Year Award as presented by the Cartoonist Club Of Great Britain.

In 1999, The World Encyclopedia of Cartoons said of him: "Commanding a masterful style, Kallaugher stands among the premier caricaturists of the (twentieth) century."

Kallaugher is past President of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists and Cartoons Rights Network, an international human rights organization dedicate to the plight of cartoonists at risk.

Books

Kallaugher published a collection of his Economist drawings entitled "Drawn from The Economist" (1988) and four collections of his Baltimore Sun cartoons entitled "KALtoons" (1992), "KAL Draws a Crowd" (1996) and "KAL Draws the Line" (2000). A new collection, "KAL Draws Criticism", was published in June 2006.

Animation

As part of his senior thesis at Harvard, Kallaugher completed a 13 minute animated film "In The Days of Disgustus" which featured characters from his weekly cartoon strip by the same name that ran in "The Harvard Crimson". In 1986, Kallaugher worked with the animator Richard Williams to produce "No Bias", an award winning 30 second television commercial for the Today newspaper in Great Britain. In 2004 Kallaugher teamed up with animator Gary Leib at Twinkle studio to create flash animation video for ABC's Nightline and CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight.

In 2006, Kallaugher was named Artist-in-Residence at the Imaging Research Center at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. With the IRC, Kallaugher has pioneered the development of 3D digital caricatures that can be animated in Real-time. His first character, The Digital Dubya, made its world premier at a live press conference at the Walters Art Museum in June 2006. The world wide web premier of his digital animation was in March 2007 when The Economist commissioned a web video to coincide with the launch of a gallery of KAL's cartoons on the magazine's website.

Kallaugher launched a Maryland-based 3D animation company, Kaltoons LLC, in 2007. Kaltoons first video, [http://youtube.com/watch?v=XbcNKvlDVjY "Dancin' Dubya"] was released online in August 2007.₪

External links

* [http://www.Kaltoons.com Official website of Kevin Kallaugher]
* [http://www.youtube.com/politicalcartoons Selection of animations by KAL]
* [http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/display.cfm?id=8717275 The Economist KAL's gallery since 2006]
* [http://www.economist.com/daily/kallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10943271 Best of KAL] , The Economist, Apr 4th 2008
* [http://audiovideo.economist.com/?fr_story=f0f1ab4be673b0294268533790f13046178fb9a5&rf=bm Video: KAL discusses these drawings and his career at The Economist]