Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Amorim on sketching our world as we know it

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A sketch by Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Amorim

Riveting. Amusing. Hard hitting. Carlos Amorim’s works knock you sideways with the enormity of the reality they depict, making you wonder why you could not see what has always been there.

Born in 1964, Brazilian Amorim was publishing his cartoons and caricatures in regional newspapers and journals, by the time he had turned 20. In a career spanning four decades, his works have been lauded across the globe and have won him awards from all over.

However, this is first time Carlos is having a show in India, courtesy the Indian Institute of Cartoonists which is displaying as many as 60 of his works. Executed in clean lines and vivid colours, each piece either provokes thought or some urgent soul searching to ascertain individual traces of guilt.

Carlos Amorim
| Photo Credit:
Special Arrangement

Over email, Carlos says the sketches on display have been handpicked from his works created over the years. While not all of his works (at least the ones on display here) are overtly political, they do make a statement about our life and times.

Traffic woes, lifestyle choices, board room shenanigans, social niceties, censorship and even pop culture are grist to his mill. However, it is obvious manmade ecological disasters are one of his pet peeves. Doomsday scenarios that force you to acknowledge, if only to yourself, that they may not be too far away in the future, are a recurring constant.

Carlos says he never needs to look too far for inspiration. “The endless desire of human beings, with their arrogance of thinking they are capable of being perfect,” provides enough and more raw material for him to work with, he says.

A sketch by Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Amorim

Even the briefest of glances at his work show how the human race so easily lends itself to being lampooned. Whether it is a lonely polar bear rummaging for trash on a tiny ice floe or Don Quixote facing a windmill in a job interview or a single dove braving a platoon of tanks, Carlos pulls no punches.

The artist who says his first drafts are usually on any scrap of paper that come to hand, uses a regular pencil to sketch the final idea on a sheet of plain A4 paper. “Marking characters, movements and balloons defined in space, I use a pen and ink to outline the drawing. Once that is done, I erase the penciled work and touch up the illustration with white paint (gouache) and scan it to finish everything with colour and a few more touches in Photoshop.”

Whatever Carlos’ methods, the final results not only offer a paranomic view of the human race, but also a glimpse of an artist’s gaze and his tongue-in-cheek wit.

Amorim, an exhibition of cartoons by Brazilian artist Carlos Amorim, will be on display at the Indian Institute of Cartoonists till September 28. Entry free.