Alexander
Saroukhan (Saroukhanian) was among the most famous caricaturists and
cartoonists of the Diaspora outside the Armenian realm, as he became a
much-sought name in the Arab world.
Saroukhan
was born in Ardanush, a town in the province of Batum (now Georgia) on
October 1, 1898. At the age of two, his family moved to Batum, where he
went to the Russian school at the age of seven. In 1909 the Saroukhan
family moved to Constantinople, where Alexander and his brother Levon
attended the school of the Viennese branch of the Mekhitarist
Congregation. From 1910-1912 the Saroukhan brothers published a
handwritten, four-page weekly called Ghughigo, with
Levon as the writer and editor and Alexander as the caricaturist. Their
publication was interrupted when their father decided to return to
Batum after his commercial plans ended in failure, and they remained in
Constantinople to continue their studies. The brothers would burn the
copies of the weekly, for obvious reasons of safety, during the Armenian
Genocide.
Saroukhan
graduated in 1915 and found refuge in the school, which was under
Austrian protection, during the war, together with their teachers and a
group of students. After the armistice of Mudros (1918), he worked in
the British army as a translator from Russian, Turkish, and German, and
also as a scribe in a store. He started publishing caricatures in
Armenian newspapers and magazines, particularly the satirical magazine Gavrosh (1921-1922).
In 1922 he left Turkey and went to Europe to study at the section of
graphics of the Art Academy of Vienna, finishing his studies in two
years, instead of the usual four.
In 1924 Saroukhan left for Egypt with more than 125 pieces of his art work. He published the satiric magazine Armenian Cinema (1925-1926),
where he also featured his drawings. He presented some of his works at
an exhibition in Cairo (1927) and met Egyptian journalist Mohamed
El-Tabii. They cooperated closely, becoming the most important and
influential journalists in Egypt for twenty years. Saroukhan worked as a
caricaturist for the widely circulated Rose el-Yusuf magazine,
named after its founder, which El-Tabii edited. His drawing of Rose
(aka Fatima) el-Yusuf, a Syrian woman journalist, was the first to
appear on the cover of the magazine in March 1928. From then on,
Saroukhan became known as a “political” caricaturist. He would draw the
cover of the magazine until 1934.
His
fame was also established through his character El-Masri Efendi
(Egyptian Efendi in Arabic). However, because of a dispute between Rose
el-Yusuf and Mohamad el-Tabii, Saroukhan left the magazine and joined
the staff of Akher Sa’a (Last Hour), another Egyptian well-known paper, which el-Tabii published until 1946. In 1945 he published Cette guerre (This War in French, 1945), considered to be his finest book as it defined his talents to discover humor in criticism.
When El-Tabii sold Akher Sa’a to Akhbar El-Yom (Today’s News), Saroukhan moved to the new newspaper, where he worked until 1952, and then he went to work at the newspaper Akhbar (Today) until his death. He published a French-language humor magazine, La Caravane, from 1939-1942. He also contributed to Egypt's foreign language press, with cartoons in La Presse Egyptienne, Image, and the Armenian daily Arev. He had exhibitions in Yerevan (1968) and Montreal (1973), among other places.
Saroukhan
drew more than 40,000 political, social, and humoristic caricatures. He
was also active in the Armenian community life of Cairo. He published
various collections of caricatures in Armenian, like We Through Our Lenses (1962) and Look at What You’re Saying! (1962), as well as the play We Don’t Know Armenian (1963).
Among other publications, he also contributed his drawings to the
republication of two classics of Armenian satirical literature: Yervant
Odian’s Comrade Panchoonie (1938) and Hagop Baronian’s The Honorable Beggars (1962).
His drawings were also used in the English translations of these books
by Jack Antreassian, and in the Spanish translation of Comrade Panchoonie by Vartan Matiossian.
Saroukhan
passed away in Cairo on January 1, 1977. He has had posthumous
exhibitions of his drawings in Alexandria (2009), Athens (2017), Cairo
(2018), and Liverpool (2018), and his memoirs were published in 2018 in
Cairo.
