Peter Kuper
For three decades artist Peter Kuper has been creating political comics and illustration for magazines around the world. He has lectured extensively on the subjects at universities including RISD, Harvard, University of North Dakota, and Yale. He has taught courses in comics and political illustration for over 20 years and has direct experience from organizing to printing to distribution in his 30 years as c0-editor of the political graphics magazine World War 3 Illustrated.
This year, he will be releasing a new book on PM Press called Diario de Mexico: A Sketchbook Journal of Two Years in Oaxaca.
Peter is available to talk on the following topics:
Revolutions and Art
Comics and political art; their application through history in a visual presentation and lecture. Peter discusses propaganda and political graphics effectively used by artists around the world. From Thomas Nast’s powerful caricatures to Diego Rivera’s controversial murals and from pages of The Masses to the artists of World War 3 illustrated. Kuper takes you on a journey of art into action.
Outside the Box
Peter discusses sequential art and its political application beyond the page in a fully illustrated lecture. From cave painting to graffiti, from Goya to Persepolis and beyond. Artists have applied their art to tell their story and our history. Co-founding editor of the political zine World War 3 illustrated shares his experience creating graphic novels and art and how to reach a world audience with political ideas.
OAXACA, Mexico Diary
In July of 2006 Peter, along with his wife and daughter moved to Mexico for a quiet sabbatical year. What they encountered was an exploding political situation that turned a quaint 16th century town into a battleground. Peter visually chronicled the events of a teachers’ strike and the battle with federal troops in his sketchbook journal Diario de Oaxaca. In a presentation and lecture, Peter will take you on a tour of these events and the application of art throughout this struggle right up to the present day.
About Peter Kuper
In 1979 Peter Kuper co-founded the political graphics magazine World War 3 Illustrated and remains on its editorial board to this day. He has taught at New York’s School of Visual Arts since 1986 and Parsons school of design and is also an art director of INX a political illustration group syndicated through the web at inxart.com.
Peter has done covers for Time and Newsweek and his illustrations and comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Harpers, Virginia Quarterly Review as well as MAD where he he has been writing and drawing SPY vs. SPY every month since 1997.
He has written and illustrated dozens of books including Comics Trips, an illustrated journal of an eight- month trip through Africa and Southeast Asia. Other works include Mind’s Eye, The System, a children’s book called Theo and the Blue Note, and SPEECHLESS, a coffee table art book covering his career up to 2000.
He has done adaptations of Franz Kafka’s work including The Metamorphosis and Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle. His wordless graphic novel Sticks and Stones won the New York Society of Illustrators gold medal and his autobiography Stop Forgetting To Remember has been translated into Spanish and French.
Peter lived in Oaxaca, Mexico with his wife and daughter from 2006-2008 and a compilation of his sketchbooks and writing about the experience, Diario De Oaxaca, was co- published in a bilingual edition by PM Press in the US and Sexto Piso in Mexico.
What People Are Saying
“Kuper is a colossus. I have been in awe of him for over 20 years. In this ruined age we need Kuper’s unsparing compassionate visionary artistry like we need hope.” —Junot Díaz, Pulitzer prize winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Peter Kuper is undoubtedly the modern master whose work has refined the socially relevant comic to the highest point yet achieved.” —Newsarama
“…an artist at the top of his form.” —Publishers Weekly
