Known worldwide for his press cartoons, Patrick Chappatte explains the origin and function of drawing in the media, its strengths but also its limitations in the era of social networks, political correctness and now the “culture of offence”.
Born in 1967, Patrick Chappatte made his debut in the Swiss press as a cartoonist for the daily newspaper La Suisse, then for L’Hebdo, la Tribune de Genève and the German-language newspaper Die Weltwoche. From 1995 to 1998, Chappatte – his pen name – lived in New York where he worked for the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times as an illustrator, before signing his press cartoons for 20 years. The cartoonist now works for the German weekly Der Spiegel, as well as for the Swiss dailies Le Temps and Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ). He also contributes to Le Canard enchaîné and the Boston Globe. His cartoons are featured in many international media, such as Courrier international.
The cartoonist is also a journalist and originator of numerous comic strip reports on the Gaza war (2009), the slums of Nairobi (2010), the Maras, gangs in Guatemala City (2012), the “factory” of K-pop stars in Seoul (2013) or on American death corridors, “Inside Death Row” published in five episodes in the New York Times in 2016.
Chappatte, whose father is Swiss and whose mother is Lebanese, visited southern Lebanon in 2009, where the population lives under the threat of cluster munitions, whose impact is similar to that of anti-personnel mines. His comic book report, La mort est dans le champ, is released in 2011 as an animated documentary.
Patrick Chappatte’s work has won numerous awards. Three times winner of the famous Thomas Nast Award (2011, 2015, 2018), he is the first non-American to be awarded this prestigious prize in April 2012.