2020 – a lonely but lively year for Swiss cartoonists
"Can everyone see and hear me?" The year that meetings and social gatherings went online. Food delivery services also did well.
Felix Schaad / Tages Anzeiger
Did you do any hamstering?
Marina Lutz
Not hawks: "Closed until December 10" – an update of Edward Hopper's famous painting. The snowflakes are coronavirus particles.
Marco Ratschiller
Daniel Koch, former head of communicable diseases at the Federal Office of Public Health, became known as "Mr Coronavirus"
Regina Vetter
"Swimwear 2020"
Gabriel Giger
Joe Biden gets to work
Peter Schrank / Business Post
Donald Trump fell to earth in November
Stephan Lütolf
"Humans appear in quarantine." A reference to the title of a novella by Swiss author Max Frisch, 'Humans appear in the Holocene".
Ruedi Widmer / WOZ
Healthcare workers on the front line in the war on Covid
Ramses Morales
Lockdown fitness
Bénédicte Sambo
The last words of George Floyd, who was killed by police officers in Minneapolis in May. His death sparked protests against police brutality around the world.
Alex Ballaman / La Liberté
Putting on one's face(mask)
Christoph Eugster
"How should we invest for our pensions?" "Profitably."
In November voters decided on an initiative to ban the Swiss National Bank, as well as pension funds and foundations, from holding shares or lending money to global companies which generate more than 5% of their annual sales from war materiel. Only 42% supported it.
Vincent L'Epée
How did life change for political cartoonists in 2020? On the one (cramped) hand, not much for a generally solitary, work-from-home occupation. On the other, there was so much news – mostly grim – that they were never in danger of running out of material to satirise.
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Born in London, Thomas was a journalist at The Independent before moving to Bern in 2005. He speaks all three official Swiss languages and enjoys travelling the country and practising them, above all in pubs, restaurants and gelaterias.
Although Covid-19 was first detected in China last year, it took a few weeks to hit Western radars. SWI swissinfo.ch’s first article appeared on January 22 – and the issue has dominated our multimedia coverage ever since.
Swiss cartoonists and caricaturists also quickly rose to the challenge of coronavirus, which turned out to be an ideal subject. There was the perceived incompetence of figures of authority, popular confusion and anger over masks and later vaccinations, and the humorous potential of enforced changes in social behaviour, such as quarantine. It helped that strong visual symbols existed in facemasks and syringes.
Artists took different approaches to Covid-19 – and indeed other major topics, notably Donald Trump. While some used highbrow cultural references or (less common in Switzerland) barbed criticism to almost shock readers, others aimed for the laughs, lowering people’s guard for the emotional punch.
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You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here. Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.