Ilustración: José Sanabria

HistoryThe Escuela Nacional de Caricatura y Comunicacion Grafica de Colombia arises in 1987, in a moment in which Colombia, from different cultural settings were arising associative and editorial initiatives related to caricature, comic strips and graphic humor. AlongAlong these years, the school has managed as educators and students to be linked to many of the most recognized representatives of these genres in the county, that have been linked or that are linked to important media such as The New York Times, the magazine L' Actualite of Canada, the newspapernewspaper La Nacion of Spain and El Clarin of Buenos Aires, as well as the most important dailies and magazines of Colombia and the participation in many ambits of art and culture in this country. Currently, the school seeks to power the singularity of its experience in new institutional developments that at the same time that consolidates as the place for excellence for investigation, production, diffusion and conservation of the cultural patrimony that is the graphic humoristic, position an academicacademic offering in the regional and national realm with highly level programs in the genres that constitute us but also advancing in an academic opportunity with its own profile in different areas of art and communication.

The Escuela Nacional de Caricatura y Comunicacion Grafica de Colombia has the merit of have been pioneer in Colombia in the development of academics programs in the genres of physiognomic caricature, comic strips, and graphic humor. The earned experience and the discovery of thesethese as prolific fields for investigation, pedagogy and the professional development allowed us to glimpse an academic project that over the years has earned greater importance from the expansion of its offering toward the fields of animated drawings, digital arts and editorial illustration. TheThe institution has come being accredited as a particular alternative of artistic formation, in tune with contemporaneous tendencies of arts and and communication.

The profile of the professionals that are formed in the School is defined with the purpose to form authors, that is to say, people with the capacity to present the esthetic dimension of the social life, to explore in their esthetic worries and to define an artistic practice as an intervention in the cultural field through to genres of so much expressiexpressive potential such as these that occupy us.

Ilustración: Turcios

The advanced program of drawing and illustration is proposed to form professional of the editorial illustration in the perspective that they become creative authors with the capacity to formulate, negotiate and to carry out their own editorial projects. projects. The books production continues being a very important field to the point that the editorial industry of our country occupies a very important place next to those of Brazil, Argentina and Mexico: An strategic interest exists in that the book industry arriarrives at new markets and be constituted in a field of development for the economy.

Ilustración: José Sanabria

Ilustración: Turcios

Ilustración: Diego Rojas

The basic course is a program designed for all those people interested in knowing the bases of the arts of the caricature, the comic strips, the graphic humor and the animated drawings, to develop practical skills for drawing and technical expressions. TheThe program contemplates four modules: Bases of the drawing, Drawing humoristic, Color and techniques, Specialization in caricature physiognomic or in comic strip.

It is a new setting to project the institutional work and from where it seeks to build a virtual social community expanding the reach of the services we carry out. The website has tools such as up-to-date world newsnews of the art and the cultu-re, the Virtual School, virtual database of the Comic Library, galleries, blogs, forums, comic magazines on-line, in addition to offer all the information on the School programs and the projects.

The website hopes to become the setting to made visible at international level of everything that happens in the world of the caricature, the graphic humoristic, the graphic narrative, the animation and the illustration in our country and in the region, in addition to contribute to the strengtheningstrengthening and linking of diverse forms of art and culture.

In the year 2007, upon arriving to its 20 year of existence, the corporation Escuela Nacional de Caricatura y Comunicacion Grafica de Colombia launched the convention to the First International Contest of Graphic Humor and Caricature City of Bogota. The success obtained by this convention with the participation of more of two hundred graphic humorists from diverse countries of the world, have take us to institutionalize as Biennial of Graphic Humor this initiative that is already an important windowwindow to project our institution internationally. The importance of the contest and exposition is related also with the possibility to exhibit the best selected works in the framework of the International Book Fair of Bogota, one of the most important cultural events of the country in where attend around 400,000 visitors each year.

In 2009, the school in alliance with the organization Sol Latino, and launches the convention to the International Illustration Contest in the framework of the LEA - First Festival of Iberoamerican Literature to be carried out in the month of June in Athens, Greece. In this way the institution keeps consolidatingconsolidating its presence in international settings seeking to gain greater diffusion of the artistic production, specially in the illustration field.