POLITICAL CARICATURES – RAGNVALD BLIX

PRESS RELEASE

For nearly half a century, German politics was at the center of the work of Norwegian-born caricaturist RAGNVALD BLIX (1882–1958). Blix was born in Christiania, now known as Oslo, in 1882. His father was a professor of Hebrew, the Minister of Church Affairs in a conservative government, and a hymn writer. However, the solemn atmosphere of his home does not appear to have restricted Ragnvald Blix’s development. Even during his school years, he drew satirical caricatures of his teachers and classmates. Blix’s verbal remarks showed as little respect for his subjects as his drawings. For Ragnvald Blix, nothing was sacred.

In 1907, Blix moved to Munich, where he worked for ten years as a cartoonist for the prominent satirical magazine Simplicissimus (founded in 1896). Afterward, he published his own satirical magazine, Exlex, in Oslo and Copenhagen for nearly two years (1919–1920). Later, he contributed to several notable Scandinavian newspapers.

Ragnvald Blix’s sharp and revealingly ironic work encapsulates the political phases of Germany and their reflections on the Scandinavian countries, beginning from his early years at Simplicissimus. His work evolves from the magazine’s opposition to Wilhelm II and warnings about escalating nationalism and war to exposing the Nazi terror of the Third Reich, interpreting the Adenauer era, and highlighting Germany’s rearmament.

Blix himself stated: “Those ten years I worked at Simplicissimus were very rich. The newspaper had a strong influence. Its criticism of the Kaiser was so fierce that there was a constant threat of imprisonment for lèse-majesté. Personally, I was lucky. At one point, there was even talk of deporting me from the country because I was a Norwegian citizen.”

The Ragnvald Blix exhibition in Pori has been organized in collaboration with the Düsseldorf City Museum, drawing from a larger Blix exhibition displayed in Düsseldorf the previous year. Works depicting Finland and other Nordic countries have been loaned from the Blix Foundation collections in Copenhagen.

Translated with ChatGPT