NEWS
A Laugh Cracks the Glass of Conformism – WHA ’26
On a tous besoin d’une caresse – illustration by Marilena Nardi
“Today it seems to me that critical responsibility is missing.
Goodism and political correctness strangle at the root any irreverent intent.
Satire, on the contrary, rests on its opposite:
the principle is to tear down the hypocrisies of common sense.”
Mario Monicelli
At last! I see nails scratching and teeth biting — not an irony of the absurd, tinged with futuristic and visionary pessimism, but one planted firmly on the ground, in the present, in the contradictions of the hinc et nunc, in the solipsism of consciences now silenced, ruminating over fragments of other people’s words and thoughts that find no echo and leave no trace. The cartoons of the World Humor Awards this time around have gained force; they have become aggressive and fierce, lacerating and sacrilegious, free of affectation and unnecessary second thoughts or omissions.
The result is a breath of fresh, light air — a laughter that spreads freely, without restraint, contagious, lightening the soul, becoming a grimace, an erasure of every caution and every hypocrisy. In previous years, the proposed theme pushed us to share fears and tremors that could not be resolved with a laugh, a jeer, an impertinence heir to the commedia dell’arte — so liberating because it strikes power, denounces social and civic absurdities, redeems the weak and the marginalised, and reveals the nakedness of the king. It does not wallow in brooding over the absurd aspects of life, but overturns the tables and upends their rules. The smile takes sides, while laughter, mockery, the stinging quip, breaks bridges — it places itself beyond the wink shared among allies of one faction against another, makes no pretence of building, but sets out to demonstrate the absurdity of certainties, of the banal, of the commonly held.
Fittingly, this small revolution — this return to fundamentals in a graphic humour award — was sparked by a theme apparently mild, faint, fragile and secondary: “kindness,” in a time of wars, fierce hatreds, and internal violence carried out with disruptive and unprecedented means, forcing us to fight with algorithms as well as with others, devious and deceitful. The cartoonists thus unleashed themselves against the hypocrisy of a bon ton that smells of stale talcum powder, of a languid and mannered imaginary, of an unctuous benevolence that is essentially disinterested and gratuitous — one that vanishes the moment it is dispensed like alms.
This is also a fine plunge into the real, into the vital relationship between what is essential and a virtual world that seems to coil around us like a serpent, rendering us dull and shapeless. A burst of laughter rings out like breaking glass. It shatters the display cases of the inertly sleeping, wresting us free from the rules imposed by an apparent commonality of feeling — from a project of social uniformity that would keep us silent yet sentient, unable to look upward, above, and discover who dominates us, uses us, and conditions our struggle to live. This long, resounding jeer makes the 2026 award catalogue richer, more beautiful, and more surprising still.
Parma, on the eve of the summer solstice
Marzio Dall’Acqua
Once upon a time…
The World Humor Awards’ arrival in Tabiano: a bridge between tradition and continuity
In 1985, during the 38th International Humor Salon in Bordighera, Tabiano hosted a significant extension of the event. The award ceremony took place inside the Terme Respighi, in a hall specially set up for the occasion, where an engaged audience witnessed the recognition of two prominent figures from the world of humor: Raymond Peynet, the celebrated creator of the famous “little lovers,” and Cesare Perfetto, honored for a lifetime dedicated to the art of humor.
A bond that renews through time
The two protagonists of that historic edition were guests at the Art Hotel Pandos, the same hotel that today welcomes the competition’s jury and in whose picturesque garden the award ceremony for the tenth edition of the World Humor Awards will take place. This particular coincidence underscores the connecting thread that links the event’s past to its present.
Among today’s jury members are prestigious names such as Lucio Trojano and Marco De Angelis, authors who have been repeatedly awarded at the Bordighera Salon, alongside Olivier Raynaud, parisian cartoonist and illustrator. It was precisely through his participation in the Humor Salon that Gianandrea Bianchi had the opportunity to meet these artists, deciding together with them to create, in 2015, a new festival that would follow in their footsteps and perpetuate their spirit.
In the photos: the 1985 event poster and the image of the two awarded protagonists.
“PREMIO GUARESCHI 2024” Bruno Gambarotta
Italian writer, journalist, TV and radio host. His talents as an entertainer and comedian came to light thanks to Celentano and his Fantastico in 1987. Thus began his career as a television and radio host (Fantastico ‘87, Lascia o doppia, Tempo reale, etc.); he is an actor, among other things, with Fabio Fazio in a television drama on Rai Due, broadcast in December 1997 and in the series La famiglia in giallo. He is a cabaret author and actor, and collaborates with various newspapers, including L’Unità, La Stampa, La Repubblica, Comix.
He has a regular column in Torino Sette in which he tells curiosities and news about Turin and Piedmont.
Gambarotta has also written and acted for cabaret theater, theater in the Piedmontese language…
The music for the award ceremony
The musical intervention that accompanies the award ceremony is entrusted to Herr Wanderlust.
Herr Wanderlust is a duo made up of musicians with solid musical experience gained in the classical and pop fields, who after having trod the stages of the most important theaters including “La Scala” in Milan, “Valle” and “Argentina” in Rome, ” Verdi” of Salerno, “Elfo” of Milan, “Regio” and “DUE” of Parma, Municipale of Reggio Emilia, “Esplanade” of Saint Etienne and many others, decide to give life to their personal project.
Since 2016 Herr Wanderlust has carried out an intense concert activity by participating in important events, festivals and concert reviews.
Wanderlust is a word of German origin which literally means desire to travel and “Mr. Wanderlust” is the imaginary protagonist of this journey. A “Journey” through music which, from Piazzolla’s Argentina to Gianluigi Trovesi’s Italy, from Celso Machado’s Brazil to the Balkans, passing through French musettes and again Fiorenzo Carpi’s Italy, the traditional Russians and many others, will will lead to imagine landscapes, cultures and colors from all over the world.
CLARINET and SAX
Paul Panigari
CLASSICAL, ACOUSTIC GUITAR
Fabiano Corso
Welcome in Salsomaggiore!
The program of the eighth edition of the WHA
The award-winning authors and members of the jury are guests of the organization.
Friday 1st September
throughout the day
Arrival of the guests in Salsomaggiore Terme and accommodation in the hotel
In the Tourist Office at the “Palazzina Warowland”
on the Touch-screen Desk in the reading room
the drawings of all the WHA authors, from the preview to today.
In the “Sala Mainardi” of the Palazzo dei Congressi
the exhibition of the 2023 finalist authors is open:
10.30-12.30 and 17.00-19.00
19.00 – Delivery of the catalog e
traditional welcome pizza at Pizzeria “Incontro”
Saturday 2nd September
10.30 am – Transfer to “Gavinell”, on the outskirts of Salsomaggiore
11.00 am – On the theme of “Biodiversity” the guided tour of the “Gavinell Botanical Garden”
13.00 – Lunch at the “Gavinell restaurant” with tasting of the local gastronomy
5.00 pm – Opening of the “Sala Mainardi”
5.30 pm – Beginning of the WHA 2023 Award Ceremony
19.30 – aperitif
Sunday 3 September
11.00 – “Institutional” visit to the Guareschi museum in Roncole Verdi
1.00 pm – Lunch at “Le Roncole” restaurant
17.00 – “Sala Mainardi” opens
Visit to the exhibition 100 years of the Baths and 150 years of Galileo Chini to be defined
___________________________________________________________________________________
For those interested
ONIRICA VIAGGI is available to organize your stay.
For all needs please contact Sabrina:
mobile: +39 392 223 4566
email: s.giordani@oniricaviaggi.it
” WHA 2023 SPECIAL GUEST ” Jean Mulatier
An outstanding guest at the 8th World Humor Awards!
JEAN MULATIER
At the age of five, he caricatured himself, drawing himself with a huge head on a small body. After secondary school at Paul-Valéry high school where he met Patrice Ricord, Jean Mulatier trained in graphic arts at ESAG Penninghen in 1966. The following year, in 1967, he passed the entrance examination to the National School of Decorative Arts in Paris, ranked 7th out of 1,300 candidates, where in the fourth year he specialized in engraving. In 1969, he joined the Pilote newspaper and produced comic strips1. Then, with Patrice Ricord, he created the Grandes Gueules series, hyper-realistic color caricatures, published by René Goscinny, on the back cover of “Pilote” magazine. From 1967 to 1972, he simultaneously ensures the continuation of his studies, and his collaboration with Pilote. Previously, he contributed to Télé 7 jours, with Le Croqué de la Semaine, in black and white. In view of the success of the Grandes Gueules, Mulatier and Ricord integrate a new collaborator into their team: Jean-Claude Morchoisne. In his studio located on the fifth floor of a building in the 20th arrondissement of Paris, each caricature done in India ink and with a brush requires him to work for around twenty hours2.
Les Grandes Gueules invade the national and international press. His are published in Paris Match, L’Express, Le Nouvel Observateur, Le Figaro (daily and magazine), Libération, Fluide glacial3, Lui, Elle, Der Spiegel, Stern, Time Magazine, Esquire, The Daily Telegraph, Jornal do Brasil, European Illustration, Graphis, Japan Illustration…etc.
In 1974, the trio left Pilote to create Mormoil, a comic book magazine for adults4. Both editor-draughtsman-caricaturist5 and artistic director of the monthly, Mulatier will invite André Franquin to produce comic strips against the grain, well before the Idées noirs. Loup, Boucq, Loisel and Binet, among others, will publish their drawings there.
In 1979, the first compilation of their works was published: Les Grandes Gueules, by Éditions du Pont Neuf.
In 1980, the trio met in the same workshop, which was to be the headquarters of their self-publishing house: Les Éditions de l’Atelier. They published a dozen collections including Ces Animaux qui nous Gouvernant and Grandes Gueules par deux accompanied by texts by Pierre Desproges.
In 1986, Jean Mulatier left the Atelier to devote himself to photography.
In the 1990s, he returned to portraiture by joining Ricord for a time on his editorial page for the Express, and continued to work in nature photography at Figaro magazine and at Vivre au jardin, through the Agence Gamma.
In 1993, he published, in solo, Gueules de ciné, with Éditions La Sirène, and in 1995 he reunited with Patrice Ricord for the album Gueules d’Etat with Glénat.
His charged portraits have often been considered fierce in their exaggerations. Thus his caricature of Leonid Brezhnev published in April 1978 in the Stern was at the origin of an incident between the Soviet first secretary and the spokesman of the German press, Brezhnev not appreciating the way in which he had been represented on the cover of the magazine6. In 2003, the Pilote newspaper revived for a summer with the release of a special summer 2003 issue and he took part in it7, he then collaborated on another exceptional issue: the Pilote “Special Christmas” in 20048.
Living in Paris, he teaches however, since 2005 in Lyon and on a regular basis, the technique of caricature, press cartoons and comics, at the Émile-Cohl school.
A large retrospective traveling exhibition, entitled Mulatier exposes his Faces-Book, 40 years of caricatures, presented more than 200 of his best drawings and photos, during the last Quai des Bulles festival in Saint-Malo, in October 2010.
(Italiano) Può il batter d’ali di una farfalla in Brasile, provocare un tornado in Texas?
Sorry, this entry is only available in Italian.
gallery.worldhumorawards.org
https://gallery.worldhumorawards.org under construction (first version online)
The new site collects all the works sent to the competition from the 2015 preview to today
and represents an interesting archive for all authors that can be easily consulted from all over the world.
I think we are the first competition to present this collection.
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