Fred Marcus was a Dutch cartoonist, illustrator and advertising artist from Hees, a little town near the city of Nijmegen. During his long career, he has made over 14,000 drawings, varying from cartoons, illustrations, comics, logos, cover designs, political drawings and paintings. Born in Amsterdam, he moved to the Nijmegen area after the Second World War. He attended the Art Academy in Arnhem, and also studied in Paris for a while. He did his first drawing assignments for French papers like Le Soir, Dimanche and Paris Match.
Het GP Mannetje
He returned to the Netherlands in 1954, and found employment with the regional newspaper De Gelderlander shortly afterwards. He created the comic strip 'Het G.P.-mannetje' between 1958 and 1963, and the character has remained the paper's mascot until the present day. Marcus is also known for his drawn reports on the International Four Days Marches Nijmegen since the mid-1950s. Outside of the Nijmegen area, he is probably best known for his advertising work for the Blood bank and Akzo, and his cover drawings for Televizier Magazine and Avrobode. During this period, Marcus was also a drawing teacher at the Gabriël College in Mook (near Nijmegen).
Political cartoons by Marcus have appeared in De Gelderlander, Haarlems Dagblad, Utrechts Nieuwsblad, Het Parool, Tubantia and Elsevier, and were also syndicated abroad to publications like Die Welt, Saturday Evening Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine, Stern, Schweizer Illustrierte, Paris Match, Punch and Soldier. His work is characterized by its jokes about religion, and the Catholic church in particular.
"He who is without sin cast the first stone"
This was already evident in his early work for the progressive Catholic magazine G3, to which also the future comedian Fons Jansen was a contributor. He also worked for other Catholic publications, such as De Bazuin and Katholieke Illustratie, for which he made comics and illustrations until the late 1960s. Several of his cartoons were collected in book format, and have also been published in Germany, Switzerland and Austria.
Other comics by Marcus are 'Joris en Jopie' for Jeugd (late 1950s) and 'Uit het barre leven van Barend Buskruit'. His latest creation was the cartoon series 'Bengeltje'.
