HUMOURISTS’ NOSES – Ján Schuster

Illustrator, aphorism writer, and restless organiser of competitions and exhibitions

He was born in December 1957 in Podbrezová. He wore out schooldesks in Banská Bystrica, Ružomberok, and Bratislava as well. In the paper mills in Harmanec and Ružomberok, he had the chance to find out not only that it is easy to draw on paper, but that behind its creation, there is hard and honest work of a few dozen people. During his studies at the paper-mill vocational school in Ružomberok, he frequented the art club, which gave him the unique opportunity to draw under the supervision of the academic painter Ján Kudlička from Ružomberok. In 1982, he successfully graduated the Department of journalism of the Philosophical faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava, with a specialisation in propagation. He often combined drawing and illustration with humour. As both drawn humour and authors thereof disappeared from the newspapers and magazines due to the unfavourable times, Schuster became fully engaged in his activity to organise events, competitions and exhibitions for cartoonists. Among the most famous, there were Novomestský osteň (The Spike of Nové mesto) in Nové mesto nad Váhom, and Bomburova šabľa (Bombur’s sabre) in Brezno. He was the founder of the national exhibition Nature preservation in cartoon in Banská Štiavnica. His meetings of authors and fans of humour in the city library in Bratislava, under the name of Humoriáda, became legendary, and he was co-organising and co-authoring them. Ján Schuster illustrated more than 20 publications, books, and colouring books for children during his career. He took part in 30 authored and collective exhibitions and since 1995, he also published drawn humour on the Internet. Since 1994, he started preparing the humorous page TIME OUT in the daily newspaper Šport, published every Friday for four years. Even though Jano Schuster tragically passed in december 2004, he left a lasting mark, also on the European Festival of Humour and Satire, Kremnica Gags. He was a long-term member of the editorial staff of the festival bulletin Gagáčik, and he became famous mainly due to the whimsical collection for the preservation of the Slovak “halier” coins. During the 21st edition, in 2001, he became the vice-chancellor of the imaginary University of Humour and Satire. That is also the reason why the founders of KG decided to pay tribute to him by revealing the embossment of his nose in the Alley of famous noses. He was always happy to visit Kremnica Gags and was always figuring our how to crack a kind-hearted or a biting joke.