Artist Profile | Cartoon & Caricature

Alireza Zakeri

He was born in 1968 in Gorgan. He is a painter, designer and cartoonist. He started his artistic activity in 1983 professionally with painting and calligraphy. Beginning in 1987, for a decade, he studied drawing and painting academically with Hadi Taghizadeh. The first exhibition of his works was in 1987 in Mashhad where an exhibition of social documentary photography was presented. At the end of the 90s he changed his course to the area of cartoon art. He started creating press cartoons since 1993 with the cartoon and graphic secretary of the newspaper “Quds”. He wrote specialized articles on caricature, illustration for newspapers and magazines, designed hundreds of volumes of books in the field of literature and billboards. For the past 25 years, he has been collaborating with various leading newspapers and media outlets in the country in the field of cartooning and design. The “Fars” news agency invited Zakeri for joint cooperation in 2005. He managed to create a new activity in the field of news agencies by launching a group of cartoons of this news agency. The activity of this cartoon group continued until the summer of 2009. He was part of the jury of the International Festival of Book Comics, Evil Verses, Wall Street and has participated in numerous national and foreign graphic festivals. Also, he attended prestigious cartoon festivals and won awards in the field of cartoons and graphics in China, England, Iran, Japan and Macedonia. Among Zakeri's latest awards are the "Golden Touba" award from the 9th "Fajr" Visual Arts Festival in 2016 and the prize and Gold Medal in the painting section of the 5th Resistance Art Festival in 2016. Zakeri believes that visual artists must have extensive experience in various fields of art in order to create works and invent new artistic styles. Hence, in addition to his professional activity in painting, he has studied and worked in the field of graphics, design, photography, illustration, calligraphy for many years. He also has experience in the field of poetry. In 2011, Zakeri received a second art degree from the Ministry of Guidance. The cartoon collection "Hair in the Wind" on the theme of sacred defense is one of his most important works.