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Carl Giles was born in London on September
29 1916. Giles was a self-taught animated artist, working as an
office boy in a film company before he became an animator for
advertising films, employed by various commercial studios in London
between 1930 and 1935. Giles then worked as an animator for Alexander
Korda, then joined Reynold News, where he was their cartoonist
for almost seven years, designing a weekly topical cartoon and
a comic strip 'Young Ernie'. He was appointed to the Daily Express
(and the Sunday Express) in 1942, and was sent as a war correspondent
to France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Personally commissioned
to do work for the MOI by Embleton, Edwin, Giles also produced
and documented films for the Ministry of Information, with his
cartoons at home 'ideally suited to the expression of Blitz humour'.
In wartime, Giles first produced the famous 'Giles Family' drawings,
and his cartoons for the Daily Express and Sunday Express were
published in an annual volume from 1945.
Giles' work was extensively reproduced in the United States and
syndicated throughout the British Commonwealth. His work was published
by Beaverbrook, who described him as 'a man of genius… who
takes the solemnity out of the grand occasion and helps the world
to keep sane by laughing at its soaring moments. Giles has a sardonic
humour which appeals because he always keeps close to the life
of the street and the farm. He depicts the attitudes of ordinary
people… and makes caustic comment about high-flown presentation.'
Giles' cartoons won praise from his fellow cartoonists, including
Ronald Searle who acknowledged that 'in his superb understanding
of human behaviour no one can touch him'. His work was included
in Drawn and Quartered, the National Portrait Gallery exhibition
of cartoonists, in May 1970. An enthusiastic engineer, motor racer,
builder and farmer, Giles was awarded an OBE in 1959 for his contribution
to the cartoon world.
Information taken from: Spartacus Schoolnet, Carl Giles,
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Jgiles.htm,
accessed September 22 2003; Amstutz, W. Who's Who in Graphic
Art 1962, p.236; Darracott, J. and Loftus, B., Second World
War Posters, 1981 (1972), p.34; Questionnaire submitted by
Royall, K. to Embleton, E., Royall, K., 'Posters of the Second
World War: The Fourth Arm of British Defence', Unpublished M.A.,
University of Westminster, 1991, p.123
Related
Texts
- Tory, Peter The Ultimate Giles, 1995
- Tory, Peter Giles
at War, 1994
- Tory, Peter Giles:
A Life in Cartoons, 1993
- Tory, Peter, The
Giles Family, 1993
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