Willem

(pseudonym of Bernard Holtrop, 1941) is a cartoonist. Holtrop lives in France, where he is known for his sharp political drawings, which appear daily in the leftwing newspaper Libération. Having worked as a cartoonist in France for over thirty years, he still supplies weekly political cartoons to HP/De Tijd. In addition, the weekly Vrij Nederland publishes his cartoons on a regular basis. After art school in Arnhem and Den Bosch Holtrop made cartoons for various magazines, including the student magazine Propria Cures. In the 1960s he became the in-house cartoonist for the magazine Provo. In 1966 a cartoon in which queen Juliana prostituted herself caused a scandal. Between 1993 and 2002 he travelled to among others the Ivory Coast, the Baltic states, New Hampshire, Moscow and Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon, where he wrote and drew diary-like reports, commissioned by Libération (see his book Razende Reporter - Raging Reporter, 2002). In France he was honoured with the ‘Medaille d’Honneur’. In Holland he recieved the Stripschapprijs for his entire oeuvre (2000) as well as the Inktpotprijs (2006, 2007).