22 November 2005

Armada Hosted Wolinski And Other Award Winners...

The world-reknown cartoonist George Wolinski chose to stay at the Armada Hotel again. The reason of his visit at Istanbul this time, was the award ceremony of the Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Competition that has now completed its 22nd year as a firmly established event in the international arena. The award ceremony was held in Istanbul last week and conducted by Korhan Abay, the MC. 1,199 artists from 90 countries, from diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds and varied world perspectives participated in the 22. Aydın Doğan International Cartoon Competition and sent in 2,996 cartoons. The Turkish jury members made the pre-selection and sent 228 works of 200 cartoonists from 44 countries to the main selection that was made in June 2005 in Antalya.

The jury composed of Adolf Born (Czech Rep./ President), Semih Balcıoğlu (Turkey), Latif Demirci (Turkey), Selçuk Demirel (Turkey), Gürbüz Doğan Ekşioğlu (Turkey), Horst Haitzinger (Germany) , Hüsamettin Koçan (Turkey), Anita Kunz (Canada), Ralph Steadman (UK), Massoud Shojaei Tabatabaei (Iran) and Georges Wolinski (France). Friederike Gross from Germany won the First Prize at the competition. Polish artist Mariusz Stawarski was the recipent of the Second Prize. Majid Amini from Iran and Dmitriy Skazhenik from Ukraine shared the Third Prize.

The whole jury and the award winning cartoonists were the guests of Armada except Adolf Born and Turkish members.

Here are some of the tracks within the Armada Guest Book from these distinguished artists:

Friederike Gross:

Ralph Steadman:

Anita Kunz:

Being an Armada-lover Wolinski always prefers to stay here and leaves Armada related cartoons as souvenir .