"Sustainable tourism" by Luc Vernimmen is the prizewinning cartoon of the 19th edition of PortoCartoon
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About 1500 works sent by more than 400 artists from 62 countries were showcased this year at the 19th edition of PortoCartoon. Belgian cartoonist Luc Vernimmen was awarded first prize in the cartoon contest organized by the National Press Museum, themed "Tourism".
The winning work is entitled "Sustainable Tourism", depicting a group of tourists sightseeing Syria by bus.
Born in 1959 in Mortsel, a suburb of Antwerp, Luc Vernimmen has been awarded several prizes in different European competitions, and was given a Special Mention in 2013 at PortoCartoon.
Jitet Kustana of Indonesia was granted second prize for the cartoon "Sunbathing in the Beach," while third place went to Ángel Boligán of Mexico with a representation of the wall that Donald Trump promised to build to form the blade of a guillotine.
This year's edition featured two Special Caricature Awards focusing on two world figures of stature: the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, on the pretext of 80 years of the famous Guernica work, and António Guterres, the newly elected UN Secretary-General.
The winners were, respectively, the Brazilian Dalcio Machado and the Portuguese António Santos, who answers by the artistic name Santiagu.
The high quality of the work in the contest has led the international jury to award more than 20 Special Mentions to artists from countries as diverse as Brazil, Italy, Russia, Turkey, Spain, Bulgaria, USA, China, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, France, Iran, and Mexico.
Georges Wolinski, Charlie Hebdo cartoonist, who was murdered in Paris in 2015, had been chairman of the Jury for a decade.
This edition's jury was formed by Bernard Bouton (president of FECO), Inês Moreira (Faculty of Fine Arts of Porto), Luiz Humberto Marcos (director of the National Press Museum), Roberto Merino (director) and Xaquín Marín (founder of Fene Humor Museum, Spain).
The trophies (designed by Siza Vieira) and prizes will be presented to the winners of the 19th PortoCartoon during the opening ceremony of the exhibition, which will be held at the National Press Museum and in various locations in the city of Porto, starting in June.