TEHRAN -- Iranian cartoonist Kambiz Derambakhsh, who is famous for his ability to find obscure subjects for his works, believes that cartoons tickle the mind and now seeks to create this feeling with football cartoons for World Cup 2006 in Germany.

An exhibition displaying Derambakhsh’s 30 works on football is to open at Nashr-e Salis (Salis Publications) today. He has been planning for the exhibition since mid 2005. Twenty of the cartoons were made exclusively for the exhibition, and 10 others drawn over the past 20 years have been recreated for the exhibition.

The Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany in Tehran and Staedtler are sponsoring the exhibition. The embassy also plans to publish a calendar for Iranian New Year containing 13 of Derambakhsh’s football cartoons. The calendars will be presented to Iranians in commemoration of World Cup 2006.

This event will be Derambakhsh’s seventh exhibition in Iran since mid 2003, when he returned home from Germany after living in the European country for about 22 years. He has previously held exhibitions in Iran at the Khaney-e Aftab, Ghandriz, Seyhoon, and Naqsh galleries as well as at the Goethe Institute and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.

He has also held exhibitions at the Wilhelm Busch Museum and the Oberhausen Castle in Germany, the Caricature & Cartoon Museum Basel (Switzerland), the Gabrovo House of Humor & Satire (Bulgaria), the Vienna International Airport, and at venues in Dusseldorf and Hamburg.

Derambakhsh, 63, has won many awards at international competitions held in Canada, Bulgaria, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, and Brazil over the past four decades. He won the Grand prize at an Istanbul competition in 1990, the grand prize at Japan’s Yomiuri Shimbun competition in 1998, the grand prize of a contest in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1998, the bronze medal for third place of a South Korean contest in 1998, and the grand prize of a Polish anti-war caricature contest in 2002.

He began his career working for a newsletter his father published for the army many years before the victory of the 1979 Islamic Revolution. In 1980, he left Iran to try his luck in Oberhausen, West Germany, where he married a German woman. Now he and his family live in Tehran. He has worked as a cartoonist, graphic designer, and illustrator for 47 years. The Nashr-e Salis coffee shop is his haunt, where he visits his students.

“I have worked on every subject you can think of. One of these subjects is sports. I have subjects even for the next 20 years, if I am still alive. I need time to put them on paper,” Derambakhsh told the Tehran Times.

“At first, I planned to hold the exhibition on sports in general, but since Iran found its way to this year’s World Cup and due to the avid football fans among the Iranian youth and middle-aged people, I focused only on works with a football theme in this exhibition,” he added.

“I seldom draw caricatures of individuals. There are many cartoonists in Iran and the rest of the world who do this better than me. I spend my energy in a genre that I am more skilled at,” Derambakhsh said.

“In addition, a caricature features only the face of a personality, but the themes of my works are mental exercises and encourage people to think,” he stated.

Derambakhsh uses simple black lines in his cartoons, rarely employing color, captions, or titles.

“With the development of the mass media, in fact, we live in the global village. Thus, through this style, I intend to create a situation where people of all nationalities are able to understand my works. The black lines are valuable in my works, though I have proven that I also have talent in color works,” he said.

A number of Derambakhsh’s works were displayed at the 7th Tehran International Cartoon Biennial, which ran from November 7 to December 1.

“A range of high-quality works were exhibited in the biennial, which was held in a good way. Such exhibitions help cartoonists branch out from their local areas, taking them to other countries by publishing their works in catalogues,” Derambakhsh explained.

A great leap forward took place for Iranian cartoons in two periods of time -- in the early days of the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and after the victory of Mohammad Khatami in the presidential election of 1997 -- due to the open atmosphere that was provided for the press. The first stage did not flourish due to the decrease in revolutionary fervor and the beginning of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.

The second phase was unsuccessful because a number of Iranian dailies and periodicals were closed for publishing cartoons that Judiciary officials regarded as insulting.

“A new wave has emerged in Iran in which people, particularly the youth, have become literature and art enthusiasts. It is a blessing that the youth are devoted to art, contrary to trends that are followed by the youth in the West. People in the West suffer from a sense of alienation from art as well as from a culture of consumerism,” Derambakhsh said.

“Unfortunately, cartoonists are employed like other artists in Iran. Managing directors of the Iranian press are afraid to use cartoons in their newspapers due to the fact that some dailies and periodicals were closed for publishing cartoons,” he lamented.