Viktor Kubal was the founder of Slovak animated film and from the second half of the 1960s he had also had a global influence. Kubal was one of the top modern caricaturists. He was born on 20th March 1923, in the village of Svätý Jur, near Bratislava. Even as a child, he portrayed his vision of the world through drawings. Cinema had an immense effect on Kubal’s life, it introduced him to the world of animation through cartoon comedy. “The biggest shock I ever experienced was, probably, when I first saw a drawing come alive in the cinema”, said Kubal many years later. He was only 12 when he drew a tank, going over obstacles, and the start-up of a plane, using black ink, on a washed celluloid strip and tried to animate the drawings. For a short period of time, he attended a film course led by Karel Plicka at the School of Arts and Crafts in Bratislava. During his studies at the Secondary Technical School of Civil Engineering and the Slovak University of Technology he mastered his drawing skills. After he passed his secondary school-leaving examinations, Kubal went to work for Školfilm – the Institute for Education and Edification Films, where he made his first animated films: Kidnap (Únos, 1942), The Well of Love (Studňa lásky, 1943) Mysterious Grandfather (Tajomný dedo, 1946) and Hurrah, Let’s Confront Them (Hurá na nich, 1946). During the 1950s and 60s he worked at the satirical magazine Roháč as a technical editor and contributed to the shaping of its fine-arts orientation through his masterful honing of the formal simplicity of caricature, including realistic features and complex messages. From 1965 he was employed by the Animated Film Studio in Bratislava. The first films he produced there were the monothematic films The White and the Black (Biely a čierny, 1965) and Zem (The Earth, 1966), which only lasted a few minutes. They were followed by the animated series about Dita, Peter, Jano, Johnny Little Pea, and grandpa, and the animated feature films The Robber Georgie (Zbojník Jurko) and The Bloody Lady (Krvavá pani). He also created numerous works for the small screen, for example, a series of bedtime stories of little cats Puf a Muf from 1971 to 1973 and The Dummy from the Crossroads (Panák z križovatky, 1980 – 1981).
A distinct feature of Kubal’s works was that he was often not only the art designer and animator but also came up with the concept and was the scriptwriter and director. Sometimes he even shot and cut his films himself. This is how his first Slovak animated feature film, Zbojník Jurko, and the later films The Bloody Lady (1980) and Marzipan comedy (1987) were created. In total, Viktor Kubal shot 214 animated films, screened in more than 70 countries, many of which received important awards at home and abroad. He participated in tens of individual and collective exhibitions of caricaturists and art designers. Apart from the long series Your Dita (Vaša Dita) published in the Roháč weekly, for many years he also contributed to the Slovak Radio satirical programme What Makes Viktor Kubal Wonder (Čo vŕta Viktorovi Kubalovi v hlave) that was broadcast from Bratislava. Kubal was also the author of the following publications: Tom Pilby’s Trip (Výlet Toma Pilbyho, 1962), Fathers and Their Children (Otcovia a deti, 1963), Your Dita (1965), Me and My Brother (Ja a môj brat, 1967). He also illustrated many books. In 1981, he took part in the foundation of the festival “Kremnica Gags” and was the first rector of the imaginary University of Humour and Satire which was founded at the same time. He died at the age of 74 in Bratislava on 24th April 1997.
Viktor Kubal
