Salon, in Zemun Štampa

Press-conference about book “Zemun school of caricature” on March 19, 1996.Zemun International Salon of Caricature was founded almost accidental- ly, by concurrence of several circumstances. After many books about Zemun history, Branko Najhold 1996 wrote and published a book "Zemun School of Caricature", dedicated to the best cartoonists from his town, whom in the same time were among the most outstanding representatives of Yugoslavian cartooning. The book called big attention of public already after the first presentation - on the press conference on March 19th 1996, and on the public promotion on May 30th 1996 was gathered about 600 interested citizens which showed that their town is not accidentally one of the centers of world cartooning. On that promotion was also opened the exhibition of the works of all Zemun cartoonists whom were presented in the book, and, rather the exhibition had no competitive character, it was given an award - for the most successful cartoon involving Zemun. The exhibition was named Zemun Salon of Caricature, rather the organizer - publishing house "Trag" (owner Branko Najhold) had no bigger ambitions.


Press-conference about book “Zemun school of caricature” on March 19, 1996.

The success of the book "Zemun School of Caricature", its excellent promotion and hundreds of Zemun citizens which clearly showed interest for cartoons stimulated the employed in publishing house "Trag" - Branko Najhold and his assistant Julijana Živković - to institutionalize Salon as manifestation, so on September 19th 1996. Zemun International Salon of Caricature was found, with the Council of Salon as the highest corpus and the director responded for the operative jobs. Yet, all those were the honorary appellations, almost all jobs connected on Salon done and the heart of Salon were Julijana Živković and Branko Najhold.

Establishing of Zemun International salon of Caricature on September 19, 1996.


After consolidate the precise rules, Salon already on the end of 1996 announced the second competition - first international, which experienced a very big success and very soon classified Zemun manifestation among the biggest and the most important world around. The causes for that were several, and the most important were surely strict obeying of the rules, which understood also the paying of promised awards and publishing of the quality catalogs, then objective judging, as well as the hospitality to all guests in Zemun. Behind all, of course, was standing the serious work and a big enthusiasm, previously of Julijana Živković and Branko Najhold. Owing that enthusiasm, Zemun International Salon of Caricature won all problems, specially those of financial nature, and was held even 1999, during the attack of NATO forces on Yugoslavia, in a situation of war conditions, when all cultural and sport manifestations in country were canceled.

Already in it's sixth edition, in 2001, Zemun International Salon of Caricature
classified among the ten biggest in the world and since then it recorded the bigger and bigger successes. After the premature death of Julijana Živković, in the beginning of 2003, Branko Najhold continued to work alone on the all operative jobs connecting with the organization. In 2004 the Salon in Zemun was one of the three biggest among the almost 300 similar manifestations held that year world around.

In a meantime, Salon besides the regular annual competition organized a lot of other exhibitions in country as well as abroad, where it presented the contemporary Yugoslavian and Zemun cartooning. Also, Zemun Salon for a years published the magazine "Kart", and made close relations with many cartoon festivals and museums in a country and abroad, as well as with Federation of Cartoons Organizations (FECO).

Reaching the top, Zemun International Salon of Caricature 2005 turned exclusively on quality and new matters, realizing that world around exist a lot of similar festivals and, for the future of cartooning, must be found something fresh and different. So the competition was on invitation, only for the top world cartoonists, and awarded among them, companied with several domestic
artists, were the participants of the first Zemun Cartoon Colony (Workshop)
"Široka staza", held on the eve of opening ceremony of the main exhibition.

Eleventh Salon was retrospective and on it were presented all awarded cartoons during first ten years.

Zemun International Salon of Caricature stay consistent its determination: quantity is subordinated to quality, so for twelfth competition 2007 was again only on invitation, for 120 selected masters of cartooning. But, we made a step forward: there were invited only the cartoonists from Europe. Thoughtlessly on enormous popularity of drawing humor in Asia (only in China two millions peoples draws cartoons) and a fact that in those countries there are a lot of good cartoonists, the sense of humor (after all, like the whole life philosophy) on that continent is utterly different than in Europe. So, often is happened that we can not understand them as well as they can not understand us. The similar situation is with Africa, even with South America. The proofs of such assertion are, among other, the catalogs of the competitions on which participated cartoonists from all parts of the world.

So, we decided that Zemun International Salon of Caricature 2007 gather only the first-class cartoonists from the “Old continent”. Of course, from the countries with a reach tradition in cartooning we invited more participants but we also made efforts to provide the participation of even one representative from small countries. And we managed, so our this year competition gathered cartoonists from 45 European countries. Almost all, except San Marino, Farer Islands and similar states. In that way, this year competition in Zemun is a kind of EUROPEAN CARTOON CHAMPIONSHIP, informal of course but quality enough to really be that.


Reasons for this theme AFRICA for 13. Salon were varied. First was the personal love of Branko Najhold for that continent and its civilization. The other, certainly resulted from the first, was a wish to present contemporary African cartoon which is very little known in the other parts of the world. Finally, the third reason was to show how European cartoonists looks on Africa, the continent with utterly different history and culture than European are. Because of that on the thirteenth Zemun International Salon of Caricature were presented the works of 90 outstanding European and 30 African cartoonists. Also in the catalog was given a short history of the cartooning on African continent written by Branko Najhold.

Salon 2009 was dedicated to a great jubilee – 2.000 years from founding of  Taurunum, Roman town on a place of nowadays Zemun, so the theme was “Europe in Roman time”. The project had to be realized together with cultural center in Oerlinghausen (Germany) but the illness of Dieter Burkamp disable that idea. Yet, several cartoons from the contest held in  Oerlinghausen in 2000 were presented in Zemun. In the catalog was given a short history of the cartooning in Roman time, written by Branko Najhold.