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I have known Jacob Shiloh's works for almost 40 years, from the early seventies. I was only a little child when my father showed me an ad in "Haaretz" newspaper, about a new weekly magazine, named "Popi". Since I knew "Popeye" from television broadcasts, I begged my father to give me a lira and a half and hurried to the nearest kiosk. There the one-eyed sailor waited for me on the cover of "Popi- the Biggest Children's Magazine in Israel". On the upper left side, near the headline, painted blue, were the words: "with the addition of the "Hevraya – the Young Tzabar's Weekly".
When I look now at the old, yellow magazine, I find that after the pages of Popeye, which introduced me to Popeye the sailor man and black haired Olive Oil, black bearded Bluto and the rest of the funny, entertaining characters (in the words of the editor Yossi Gamzo), Shiloh's illustrations awaited me. His drawings were published in the attached "Hevraya – the Young Tzabar's Weekly", and provided the perfect antithesis to the Popeye bunch: they were perceptive, delicate, and full of complex, made out of numerous lines. In my reading of the magazine, first appeared a tiny illustration for the story "Vehicle of Fire " by Yemima Tchernowitz – Avidar, afterwards I noticed two reddish illustrations for "a new work from the blessed pen of Levin Kipnis" (again, in the words of Yossi Gamzo), than a drawing of a side view of a cannonball for "Uzi's Tales of Bravery" and many more.. In addition, I discovered that Jacob Shiloh was also the Magazine's Graphic Designer, although I had no idea of what that is. As a young, avid and enthusiastic reader, Shiloh's drawings were an object of fascination for me for about a year and a half, until the closing of the magazine, and provided me with a first acquaintance with journalistic drawings.
Self Portrait
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However, Shiloh's career began prior to his work for "Hevraya" magazine. He was a permanent caricaturist for "Davar" seven years earlier, won the First Prize in the Montreal, Canada International Caricatures Exhibition and due to his work for the Weekly "BaMaChane" newspaper and the IDF's Armored Corps, was appointed as the permanent caricaturist for the "Maariv" newspaper in the early 1980's.
Although Shiloh's illustrations hold many little tender lines which seem to express many things, his caricatures have a clear and sharp line, which expresses its message accurately and with no compromises. Those are the characteristics of the political cartoonist. This is the art of reduction: meaning, being able to express many things with one clean, clear line.
Shiloh excels in all of those, perhaps due to his European origin, or to his military service. He tries and succeeds in delivering his message in the most precise and explicit manner, with no compromises in his art, true to his opinions and principles, and unwilling to step out of his path. By defining himself politically as "a little right from the center" he indicates himself differently than most of his fellow media colleagues, who mostly tend to be part of the political left. It seems that there is no one worthier than him for the Israeli Cartoon and Caricature Museum's "Golden Pencil" award. While ascribing importance to his early works in the "Pi Haton" magazine, the Jerusalem's Hebrew University Student Union's journal, while he was a student at the "Bezalel" Academy during the late 1950's, we conclude the active career of the past 50 years, while looking hopefully towards the future…
• More about Jacob Shiloh:
• Jacob Shiloh's Curriculum Vitae
• An interview with Jacob Shiloh by Eli Eshed.
Curator: Tsahi Farber
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