deBuren

'People sometimes ask me: 'Has your work had any significance?' For the first time in forty-seven years, I am forced to answer 'I don't know'. I could view my work as the historiography of a personal experience, as a commentary. I have always aimed to have an impact. But I don't know if I have succeeded', said GAL in an interview with De Standaard.

Gerard Alsteens - better known as the cartoonist GAL - is the son of a wine-grower from Overijse. He studied painting and graphics at the Hogeschool Sint-Lukas in Brussels where he later taught for more than forty years.

Several years ago, GAL thought he would have to give up drawing after an embolism in his right eye almost blinded him. However, he learnt to live with his handicap and continued to work diligently on his political cartoons in Knack, for which he began drawing in the 1970s. He first worked as a graphic designer at the magazine De Linie and in 1964 he became the house cartoonist of De Nieuwe.

His style was once described by Louis Tobback as 'painful, but never poisonous'.Alsteens has received the Ark Prize of the Free Word, the Prize for Human Rights and the Louis Paul Boon award and has been honoured several times at the Knokke-Heist cartoon festival.