William Papas

William "Bill" Papas was a political cartoonist and caricaturist who worked for The Guardian, The Sunday Times and Punch. He grew up in South Africa to where his Greek father had emigrated, and studied at Johannesburg Art School, Beckenham School of Art and St. Martin's in London. Having worked as a cartoonist in South Africa, covering Nelson Mandela's trial for treason in 1958, he returned to Britain as a cartoonist and illustrator.

Upon retirement, Bill and his wife Tessa moved to Ermioni, the village in the Peloponnesus that his father had left in 1900, shifting his focus to painting and book illustrations.

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William Papas:

"I regard myself as an artist/reporter, a recorder of people, places and events. In 1947 I found myself sketching on the street corners of Cape Town and of war-ravished Europe. In 2000 I find myself doing the same thing in different parts of the world. It is a compulsion to record a passing moment. A sketchbook commands respect, a degree of awe and instant communication in a way a camera cannot. It is a passport to people. In Portland sullen street kids talk to me. In Egypt I had to employ someone to restrain the crowds that gathered to watch. In Guadaloupe a belligerent man threatened to smash my wife's camera but ran to fetch his child once I produced the sketchbook. In Italy construction workers abandoned their jobsite to pose for me. In Jerusalem, however, it took a week for me to be accepted by the wary inhabitants. Finally a child explained to another, "He's not Israeli/Palestinian/Greek, he's an artist, silly!" 

I am influenced by Daumier and Toulouse Lautrec. The drawing and the actual line are important for me. I obtain immense satisfation in realising a situation or movement with a simple pen stroke. I hope to be remembered as a chronicler, that viewers will look at a painting or sketch or cartoon of mine and will say, "Yes, that is right. That is how it was/is!"

 

 

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