Pál Pusztai ( ; September 4, 1919 - September 11, 1970) was a Hungarian graphic artist and cartoonist. Pusztai is remembered for his comic strip "Jucika" (1957-1970), which gained a strong internet following in the late 2010s.

Life

Pusztai first started working as an officer of the

Hungarian State Railways Hungarian State Railways ( hu, Magyar Államvasutak, MÁV) is the Hungarian national railway company, with divisions "MÁV START Zrt." (passenger transport), "MÁV-Gépészet Zrt." (maintenance), "MÁV-Trakció Zrt." and "MÁV Cargo Zrt" (freig ...

, where he made public service drawings and posters. Later, he switched to advertising graphics. In 1955, he published his first newspaper cartoons, displaying distinctive style features. Pusztai's clear, understandable and well-composed drawing style made him one of the most significant Hungarian artists of the genre. From 1959 he worked as a regular artist for the magazine '' Ludas Matyi''. There, he authored a series of military-themed cartoon titled (), featuring two characters, a Soviet and an American soldier. In keeping with the communist-sympathetic Hungary, Ivan was depicted as the wiser and more prudent of the two. His longest-running comic strip series (1957–1970) was , featuring a young, independent woman, frequently in risqué situations. For his independent cartoon album (1963) Pál Somogyi wrote a preface. His cartoons have been published in international publications, and have been featured in international cartoon exhibitions and biennials, which have been internationally recognized. As an external collaborator he was engaged in several magazines, and his cartoons could be seen, among others, in ''Workers' Magazine'', ''Country-World'', ''Women's Magazine'', ''Illustrated Hungary'', and ''Füles''. He also made advertising drawings, postcards (a series of military cartoon postcards, still in circulation for many years after his death), card calendars, and designed educational and movie posters. He signed as Pusztai.

Posthumous popularity

Originally a little-known comic primarily restricted to 1960s Hungarian popular culture, Pusztai's comic ''Jucika'' gained an international

cult following A cult following refers to a group of fans who are highly dedicated to some person, idea, object, movement, or work, often an artist, in particular a performing artist, or an artwork in some medium. The lattermost is often called a cult classic. ...

during the late 2010s after the series sparked renewed interest on numerous online imageboards and

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

. The comic's online popularity inspired the establishment of a

booru An imageboard is a type of Internet forum that focuses on the posting of images, often alongside text and discussion. The first imageboards were created in Japan as an extension of the textboard concept. These sites later inspired the creation of ...

in November 2019 to archive fanmade images of the title character.

References

External links

*
Pál Pusztai
on Lambiek
Pál Pusztai
at Budapest Poster Gallery * {{DEFAULTSORT:Pusztai, Pál 1970 deaths 1919 births Hungarian illustrators Hungarian cartoonists Hungarian comics artists Artists from Budapest