postcard of the 31st Diamond Pepper Festival
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- Sat, 9 Sep 2023 13:54:20 +0330
Artist
Biography
Gerald Anthony Scarfe, CBE, RDI (born 1 June 1936) is an English cartoonist and illustrator. He has worked as editorial cartoonist for The Sunday Times and illustrator for The New Yorker.
His other work includes graphics for rock group Pink Floyd, particularly on their 1979 album The Wall, its 1982 film adaptation, and tour (1980–81), as well as the music video for "Welcome to the Machine".Scarfe was the production designer on the Disney animated feature Hercules (1997). Scarfe also provided the opening titles for Yes Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.
Scarfe was born in St John's Wood, London. As Scarfe was severely asthmatic as a child, he spent many of his early years bed-ridden, so drawing became a means of entertainment as well as a creative outlet. It has been speculated[by whom?] that the grotesque and diseased images that often characterize his work are a result of these experiences. He has himself stated that the irreverence apparent in much of his work can be traced back to "dodgy treatments" and a reliance on what he feels were incompetent doctors.
At the age of 14 and now living in Hampstead, north London, he decided it would be easy to cycle to Bayswater and visit the cartoonist Ronald Searle. He went several times but never rang the doorbell. It would be many years later that he would actually meet Ronald Searle. He went to Saint Martin's School of Art (now part of the University of the Arts London) in Holborn, London. He also went to the London College of Printing and East Ham Technical College (became Newham College of Further Education).
Scarfe was approached to work with Pink Floyd after Roger Waters and Nick Mason both saw his animated BBC film A Long Drawn Out Trip. Pink Floyd's 1974 programme for their tour in the UK and US, in the form of a comic, included a centre-spread caricature of the band. Scarfe later produced a set of animated short clips used on the 1977 In The Flesh tour, including a full-length music video for the song Welcome to the Machine.
