Ken Sprague (cartoonist)

Ken Sprague
Head-and-shoulders frontal photographic portrait of the English political cartoonist Ken Sprague (1927–2004) in late middle age.
Sprague in middle age
Born
Kenneth Reginald Sprague

(1927-01-01)1 January 1927
Bournemouth, Dorset, England
Died25 July 2004(2004-07-25) (aged 77)
Barnstaple, Devon, England
Resting place
East Down Parish Churchyard, Devon, England
EducationBournemouth Municipal College
OccupationsPolitical cartoonist, graphic designer, journalist, activist, TV presenter, psychotherapist
Years activec. 1937 – 2004
Known for
Spouses
  • Sheila Kaye (m. 1951-1973)
  • Marcia Karp (m. 1974)
Children7[1]: 14 

Ken Sprague (1 January 1927 – 25 July 2004) was an English political cartoonist, graphic designer, journalist, and activist. A socialist, he was involved in trade union, civil rights, and peace movements. In later life, he was also a TV presenter and a psychotherapist. According to his biographer, "In essence the leitmotif of his work is about power and the abuse of power as well as the resilience of ordinary working people to this abuse... It is an art of engagement – engagement for change."[1]: 15 

Early life

Ken Sprague was born in Bournemouth on 1 January 1927.[1]: 15  His mother made cardboard boxes in a factory,[1]: 16  and his father was an engine driver.[1]: 20  His first work of art, created in 1937 in response to the bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, was a linocut printed on his mother's mangle.[2]: 27 

Sprague was educated at Alma Road Elementary School and Porchester Road Secondary Modern School, where the headmaster, noticing his talent, recommended that he apply to the local art school. He won a scholarship to Bournemouth Municipal College, attending from the age of 13½. To pay for the cost of materials, his mother took on a cleaning job.[1]: 20  At the time, scholarship students tended to be placed in courses for commercial art rather than fine arts,[3]: 45  as Sprague recounts:[1]: 26 

I was already labelled as the working class kid who'd have to make a living later, so was placed in the commercial class to study design and printing. I wasn't admitted to the fine art classes until I muscled my own way to the life classes.

In 1944, aged 17, he volunteered for the Royal Marines and, the same day, joined the Communist Party of Great Britain. This was not a contradiction, as he later told his biographer:[1]: 32 

The Marines had the reputation of killing more Nazis than anyone else and the Communists were seen as the only real force opposing the Nazis.

After basic military training, Sprague was assigned to Vickers Supermarine as a technical artist, and worked on ejector seats for Spitfires. He was also sent to Yugoslavia to bring back an ejector seat from a shot-down German plane.[1]: 27 

Postwar, and after a summer stint in a circus, he completed his college diploma course in design and illustration. The Communist Party, he told his biographer, was his "university", remarking that after Bournemouth's newspaper had labelled him as a college revolutionary, local job prospects dwindled.[a] He briefly worked for a volunteer labour battalion in Yugoslavia, was commissioned by The Scouter to make drawings of a scouts convention, and illustrated a book[5] for the Boy Scouts Association.[1]: 28–36 

Sprague married Sheila Kaye in Bournemouth on 17 March 1951.[6]

Cartoonist, designer, journalist, activist

From 1950 to 1954, Sprague worked in a Carlisle mining company's design office; he also produced cartoons for local newspapers, and was a member of staff of the Tullie House school of art, giving lectures to the local art society.[7][8] He then moved to London as the Daily Worker's publicity manager, contributing, in addition, as a journalist and cartoonist.[9] He joined the Communist Party Artists Group led by Clifford Rowe.[3]: 185 

In 1959, together with Ray Bernard, a socialist businessman, Sprague set up a design company, Mountain and Molehill, to serve the Labour movement,[3]: 191 [1]: 77  while continuing to produce cartoons for the Daily Worker and its successor, the Morning Star. Sprague set out to persuade trade union leaders that they should harness publicity to win hearts and minds and promote their members' causes.[3]: 191  Mountain and Molehill was responsible for several trade union publicity campaigns in the 1960s and 1970s, using techniques – such as leafleting London Tube stations and producing 7-inch vinyl records featuring Ewan MacColl[b] and Acker Bilk[c] – that were innovative for the time.[3]: 191  In 1961, the Foundry Workers' Union commissioned the company to design a poster, certificate and gold medal to welcome Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut, to Manchester as an honorary member of the union (he had trained as a foundry worker)[3]: 191  during his visit to Britain that year.[10]

In the early 1960s, Sprague was involved in raising funds from unions to support Centre 42, a cultural hub (established by Arnold Wesker and others) in London's Roundhouse.[3]: 192–193  In 1962, he stood as the Communist candidate for the Sydenham East ward in elections to Lewisham London Borough Council. He received 182 votes, and was not elected.[11]

During the 1950s and 1960s, Sprague designed several settings for the Unity Theatre's productions of The Apple Cart, The Cherry Orchard, and The Crucible,[12] among others.[1]: 45  In the 1970s, he designed book covers for The Journeyman Press,[13] an independent London- and West Nyack-based publisher.[14]

In the late 1960s, Sprague began editing The Record, the official publication of the Transport and General Workers' Union, illustrating it with his own cartoons.[1]: 87  In the words of Jack Jones, the union's general secretary, "His imaginative approach and drive transformed it from a humdrum 'house' journal into a lively, dynamic newspaper."[1]: 6  For a short period in 1976, he edited the anti-fascist magazine Searchlight.[15] In the 1980s, his cartoons appeared in Anti-Apartheid News.[d][16]

Poster and print-maker

Sprague designed posters for, among others, the Anti-Apartheid Movement,[17] the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, and the Martin Luther King Memorial Fund. In the late 1950s, he created posters protesting against pit closures in Wales,[18] and a series of anti-racist linocuts,[e] London Black and White.[3]: 147  In 1969, he made We Choose To Work At Porton, a set of posters depicting the attitudes of people working at Porton Down, a British government chemical and biological warfare research facilty.[20][f] A 1971 poster opposed the British Industrial Relations Act.[22] Sprague's work for the Martin Luther King Memorial Fund won him an award from the UK's Council of Industrial Design in its 1969 poster competition. His design, incorporating a stylised hand obstructing a bayonet, was called "poignant, well drawn and well designed" by the judges.[23]

Many of his works concerned wars and conflicts, including the Vietnam War,[24] the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Kosovo War, and the Iran–Iraq War. He was a war artist during the latter, accompanying an Iraqi regiment during an attack on Abadan.[25] Sprague met Saddam Hussein and sketched him. He responded to criticism of this encounter and his involvement with Iraq by maintaining that he was documenting the horrors of war, the subject which had brought him to create political art in the first place.[1]: 74–76 

Film and TV

Sprague produced linocuts for Fighting The Bill (1970), an agit-prop film made as part of a campaign against the Industrial Relations Act[26] by the left-wing collective Cinema Action.[27] He was the subject of a 1970 documentary produced by John Green (his future biographer[1]) and Gina Kalla in collaboration with the collective.[28]

In 1976, Poster Man, a documentary about Sprague, was broadcast by the BBC as part of its Omnibus series.[29] Directed by Jeff Perks and introduced by Humphrey Burton, it was repeated in 1977.[30] In 1984, Sprague presented a five-part documentary series, Everyone A Special Kind of Artist, on Channel 4. In each half-hour episode,[g] he interviewed an artist or group of artists and talked about their life and work.[32]

Psychodramatist

In 1971, Sprague moved with his wife Sheila, a potter, to Holwell, a farmhouse near Barnstaple, and converted it into an arts centre. Sheila died in 1973.[33]

With his second wife, Marcia Karp, he then set up the Holwell International Centre for Psychodrama and Sociodrama, which the couple ran until 1998.[33] During this period, Sprague wrote about his experiences as a psychodramatist helping young people with learning difficulties;[34] explained, using short vignettes, the core principles of psychodrama;[35] and contributed a chapter to a handbook on the subject:[36] he illustrated all three works. He also described his attendance at an international conference on psychodrama and group analytic psychotherapy in Buenos Aires in 1985, where he and Karp ran a workshop on the 1982 Falklands War.[37]

In 1998, Sprague and Karp moved to Lynton and set up the Hoewell International Psychodrama Centre.[38]

Death

Ken Sprague died in Barnstaple on 25 July 2004.[39]

Exhibitions

  • "Ken Sprague: Paintings, Drawings and Lithographs",[h] December 1950, Southampton[40]
  • "Peterloo: Prints to Commemorate the 150th Anniversary", August 1969, Peterloo Gallery, Manchester[41]
  • "Printer and Potter at the Peterloo: Ken and Sheila Sprague", January 1971, Peterloo Gallery, Manchester[42]
  • "Artists[i] in Tribute to the Miners' Struggle and for Trade Union Solidarity", April–May 1974, Congress House, London[43]
  • "Ken Sprague: An Exhibition of Posters, Prints, Sculpture", December 1977 – January 1978, Foyles Art Gallery, London[44]
  • "Ken Sprague: Prints and Drawings", September–October 1981, Iraqi Cultural Centre, London[45]
  • "Ken Sprague: Recent Works", April–May 1982, Newlyn Art Gallery[46]
  • "A World to Win: Posters of Protest and Revolution,[j] May–November 2014, V&A,[47] National Print Museum (2015), William Morris Gallery (2016), and others

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ At the conclusion of an exchange of letters to the editor of the Bournemouth Daily Echo about the Malayan Emergency, published in July/August 1950, the manager of a rubber plantation referred to Sprague's views as "... appear[ing] to have been culled from the pages of the 'Daily Worker'."[4]
  2. ↑ Come on Gal and Join the Union (1960) for the Garment Workers' Union.
  3. ↑ Marching Union (1961) for the National Union of Boot and Shoe Operatives.
  4. ↑ ISSN 0003-5580
  5. ↑ The series included Contempt, Service, and Happiness.[19]
  6. ↑ The series comprised It's For Purely Defensive Purposes, It's A Big Dollar Earner, If I Didn't Do It Someone Else Would, We're Only Obeying Government Orders, But The Money Is So Good, and We Choose To Work At Porton.[21]
  7. ↑ A one-hour programme about Arnold Taylor, a seaside postcard designer and illustrator, was broadcast on 24 December 1983 as a prelude to the series.[31]
  8. ↑ The Hants & Dorset District of the Communist Party organised this two-day exhibition. The article reproduces a drawing by Sprague illustrating the lines "'Tis to work and have such pay / As just keeps life from day to day" in Shelley's The Masque of Anarchy.
  9. ↑ Besides Sprague, the artists exhibiting included the Ashington Group, Mary Louise Coulouris, Gertrude Elias, Bernard Charnley, Anthony Dorrell, Maureen Scott, and Josef Herman.
  10. ↑ This touring exhibition included examples of Sprague's posters alongside work by artists including, from Britain, Peter Kennard, David King, and David Gentleman.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Green, John (2002). Ken Sprague: People's Artist. Stroud: Hawthorn Press with Artery Publications. ISBN 978-1-903-45834-1. OCLC 52632515.
  2. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1978). "Said and Done". In Art for Society: contemporary British art with a social or political purpose (exhibition catalogue and essays). London: Whitechapel Art Gallery. pp. 27–31. OCLC 729662447. Retrieved 11 August 2026.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lindey, Christine (2018). Art for All: British Socially Committed Art from the 1930s to the Cold War. London: Artery Publications. ISBN 978-0-95582-288-9. OCLC 1010955299.
  4. ↑ Gray, H. F. W. (29 July 1950), "Fighting for freedom in Malaya", p. 3, col 1; Sprague, Ken (5 August 1950), "Malaya", p. 3, col 4; Gray, H. F. W. (12 August 1950), "Malaya: Mr. Gray Answers Critics", p. 3, cols 1–4, retrieved 16 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com. Bournemouth Daily Echo.
  5. ↑ Cook, A. B.; Brewis, A.; Stewart, J. D.; et al. (1948). Arkill, Leslie; Hazlewood, Rex (eds.). Public Occasions. Boy Scouts Association. OCLC 810657939. Retrieved 17 August 2026 – via Internet Archive.
  6. ↑ "Marriages". Bournemouth Daily Echo. 19 March 1951. p. 11, col 6. Retrieved 16 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  7. ↑ "Artists urged to paint people". Cumberland News. 15 December 1951. p. 5, col 3. Retrieved 17 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com. [Sprague] particularly begged the audience to attempt to paint people ... to reveal the character of a face; to communicate ... something of the gaiety, the irony, the tenderness, the humour, and the grimness, which are to be seen every day in homely incidents.
  8. ↑ "Wood engraver – 'great debt'". Cumberland News. 27 February 1954. p. 8, col 7. Retrieved 17 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com. In his lecture ... [Sprague] gave a short outline of the history of wood engraving, and then with illustrations, enlarged on the 'white line technique' of Thomas Bewick.
  9. ↑ For example, see Small, Rosemary; Sprague, Ken (8 March 1957). "Gold, Gadgets and Goosepimples". Daily Worker. p. 2, cols 1–4. Three cartoons by Sprague illustrate this cowritten article about the Ideal Home Exhibition.
  10. ↑ Moskvitch, Katia (8 April 2011). "Yuri Gagarin: Memories of first spaceman's UK tour". BBC News. Retrieved 9 August 2026. See section "Unexpected reply".
  11. ↑ "This Is How You Voted". Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette. London. 18 May 1962. p. 7, col 6.
  12. ↑ "St. Pancras Art Festival". The Stage. London. 20 February 1958. p. 10, col 3.
  13. ↑ "Ken Sprague book covers". Frontline States. n.d. Archived from the original on 20 August 2026. Retrieved 20 August 2026. The covers shown include those for The Iron Heel and The People of the Abyss by Jack London.
  14. ↑ "The Journeyman Press". Frontline States. n.d. Archived from the original on 9 August 2026. Retrieved 20 August 2026.
  15. ↑ Edgar, David (9 March 2025). "50 years and counting: Searchlight's past, present and future". Searchlight. para 7. Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  16. ↑ Drawing the Line : Cartoonists Against Apartheid : A selection of illustrations from 20 years of Anti-Apartheid News. London: Anti-Apartheid Movement. 1985. See pp. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 34, 37, 38, and covers. ISBN 978-0-900-06507-1. OCLC 13727939. Retrieved 17 August 2026 – via Anti-Apartheid Movement Archive.
  17. ↑ "Mountain and Molehill". V&A. Retrieved 7 August 2026. Against Apartheid: Boycott South African Goods, Poster, designed by Mountain and Molehill, 1960; Martin Luther King Memorial Fund, Poster, designed by Mountain and Molehill, 1960-1970.
  18. ↑ Rickards, Maurice, ed. (1970). Posters of Protest and Revolution. New York: Walker & Co. Illustration 159 (credited to Mountain and Molehill). OCLC 71939. Retrieved 15 August 2026 – via Internet Archive. For works credited to Sprague, see illustrations 151, 169, 209, & 210.
  19. ↑ "Ken Sprague: four lino prints". MutualArt. 2024. Archived from the original on 24 August 2026. Retrieved 24 August 2026.
  20. ↑ "Posters, rats and Porton Down". Tribune. Vol. 33, no. 34. 22 August 1969. p. 7. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
  21. ↑ "Lot 398. Sprague (Ken, 1927–2004). We Choose to Work at Porton, August 1969, six lithographs". Dominic Winter Auctioneers (high-resolution images). November 2025. Archived from the original on 22 August 2026. Retrieved 23 August 2026.
  22. ↑ "Crush Anti-Union Laws" (poster). V&A. E.722-2003. Retrieved 12 August 2026. This witty use of photo-montage shows prime minister Edward Heath squeezed by a giant worker's hand. In 1971, Heath's government passed the Industrial Relations Act to exert greater control over the trade unions. Sprague designed both black and white and colour versions of the poster. Some felt the red drop of blood was too bloodthirsty. (Gallery label).
  23. ↑ London, John (17 April 1969). "The man who designs with his heart". Evening News. London. p. 4, cols 4–6.
  24. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1966). "The Arrogance of Power: Linocuts by Ken Sprague". Frontline States (several linocuts from folio). London: The Molehill Press. OCLC 80432255. Retrieved 7 August 2026.
  25. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1981). The Smoke at the End of the Road: Drawings from Abadan. London: The Iraqi Cultural Centre. OCLC 1062281444.
  26. ↑ Cinema Action (1970). Fighting the Bill (film). Platform Films. Retrieved 9 August 2026 – via YouTube. See "Resist secret ballots" segment, 24:55 to 26:44 minutes in.
  27. ↑ "Cinema Action". Screenonline. British Film Institute. Retrieved 9 August 2026.
  28. ↑ Green, John; Kalla, Gina (2021) [1970]. A portrait of the artist Ken Sprague (digitally remastered by Chris Reeves) (film). Platform Films. Retrieved 19 August 2026 – via YouTube.
  29. ↑ Perks, Jeff (director); Burton, Humphrey (host) (27 May 1976). "Far Away: two portraits of artists living at the remote corners of Britain". Omnibus. Season 9. Episode 29. BBC1. Retrieved 19 August 2026 – via BBC Programme Index. Programme listing published in Radio Times, London edn. (20 May 1976). 211 (2741): 55. "Poster Man: Ken Sprague lives on the edge of Exmoor in Devon, a long way from the subjects that concern him. He makes posters and his whole life is committed to working with and for ordinary people all over the world."
  30. ↑ Perks, Jeff (director); Burton, Humphrey (host) (27 January 1977). "Colour Positive". Omnibus. Season 10. Episode 16. BBC1. Retrieved 19 August 2026 – via BBC Programme Index. Programme listing published in Radio Times, London edn. (20 January 1977). 214 (2776): 51. "Poster Man: 'I would like to re-create an international language – a language of Signs.' Ken Sprague lives on the edge of Exmoor in Devon. He makes posters, and his whole life is committed to working with and for ordinary people all over the world. A second chance to see this much-acclaimed film about the man and his work."
  31. ↑ Cowley, Elizabeth (24 December 1983). "Wee Bit Cheeky". Daily Mail. p. 20, cols 3–4. Gale EE1861415104. Graphic artist Ken Sprague ... hits the trail of the naughty seaside postcard ... This delightful documentary is the flagship for a New Year season of programmes called 'Everyone A Special Kind of Artist'.
  32. ↑ Sprague, Ken (presenter & interviewer); Perks, Jeff (director) (1984). Everyone A Special Kind of Artist (series). Channel 4. All five episodes were each broadcast at 6:30 pm. Transmission dates, with listings in TV schedules (published on the same dates) in particular newspapers of record, were as follows:
    1. (4 January). "Handel Edwards ... a South Wales plasterer who spends most of his spare time in his home carving pieces of mahogany." The Times. p. 21, col 4. Gale CS352554532.
    2. (11 January). "Melinda Perham has been painting the history of Clovelly, a picturesque Devon fishing port, for the past six years on the pebbles she finds on the beach." The Times. p. 25, col 4. Gale CS419663403.
    3. (18 January). "[T]he Sussex Quilters, a group of 30 Sussex women who are making an intricate and colourful quilt." The Times. p. 21, col 4. Gale CS352554546.
    4. (25 January). "David Carpanini [is] the art master at Oundle School ... His works are portraits of his native Welsh mining village." The Times. p. 21, col 4. Gale CS352554553.
    5. (1 February). "[E]x-miner Jock Purdon, from Durham ... paints pictures of his community's history – in poetry and song." The Guardian. p. 24, col 4. ProQuest 186414026.
  33. 1 2 "Holwell History". Holwell Holistic Retreat. n.d. See section "Ken Sprague and Psychodrama". Retrieved 12 August 2026.
  34. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1991). "Everybody's a somebody: action methods for young people with severe learning difficulties". In Holmes, Paul; Karp, Marcia [in French] (eds.). Psychodrama: Inspiration and Technique. Tavistock/Routledge. pp. 33–52. ISBN 978-0-415-02672-7. OCLC 21148264.
  35. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1994). "Stepping into the cosmos with our feet on the ground". In Holmes, Paul; Karp, Marcia [in French]; Watson, Michael (eds.). Psychodrama since Moreno: Innovations in Theory and Practice. Routledge. pp. 11–35. ISBN 978-0-415-09350-7. OCLC 29566508. p. 13: I want to tell what, for me, psychodrama's underlying philosophy is about, to show how it can be enjoyed and to suggest ways of discovering its relevance for us all as we approach the twenty-first century.
  36. ↑ Sprague, Ken (1998). "Permission to interact: a who, how and why of sociodrama". In Karp, Marcia [in French]; Holmes, Paul; Bradshaw Tauvon, Kate (eds.). The Handbook of Psychodrama. London: Routledge. pp. 247–262. ISBN 978-0-41514-845-0. OCLC 38002677. p. 247: Asking why one should concern oneself with social problems or try to change the status quo is like asking a mountaineer, 'Why climb Mount Everest?' The answer will probably be, 'Because it is there'. It seems to me that the same can be said of social difficulties; they are there.
  37. ↑ Sprague, Ken (March 1986). "Unmaking Guernica". Group Analysis. 19 (1): 71–75. doi:10.1177/0533316486191011. ISSN 0533-3164. Full access available to users of The Wikipedia Library.
  38. ↑ "Hoewell International Psychodrama Centre". British Psychodrama Association. 1998. Archived from the original on 3 December 1998. Retrieved 13 August 2026. Holwell has moved to the sea in Lynton, North Devon. ... Holwell has changed its name to Hoewell. The word hoe has two meanings. It is a ridge of land and a tool. As a tool, a hoe is used to weed, to thin out or to cultivate. Since 1699, a hoe has dug up, raised up and taken away. This is what the new Hoewell International Psychodrama Centre intends to do – to dig up, raise up and cultivate the old in order to bring in the new.
  39. ↑ Dallas, Karl (2 August 2004). "Ken Sprague: Political artist who sought to build 'a picture road to socialism'". The Independent. Retrieved 15 August 2026.
  40. ↑ Dudley, James (6 December 1950). "From the Visitors' Book". Daily Worker. p. 2, cols 4–6.
  41. ↑ Bates, Merete (15 August 1969). "Peterloo Massacre prints". The Guardian. p. 27. ProQuest 185443277. Full access available to users of The Wikipedia Library.
  42. ↑ Watkinson, Ray (22 January 1971). "To socialism with pots and prints". Tribune. Vol. 35, no. 4. p. 7. Retrieved 10 August 2026. [B]ehind [Sprague's] power of eliciting instantaneous, powerful visual images lies his even more remarkable ability to provoke in people of all kinds – strangers and solitaries as well as comrades in the movement  – an awareness of the realities in which they are enmeshed. They begin to discover that the trouble of their hearts and the burdensome crises of daily life are as political as a general election, a strike, a revolution.
  43. ↑ "Art for the workers". Tribune. Vol. 38, no. 17. 26 April 1974. p. 9. Retrieved 10 August 2026. The exhibition ... allows dedicated and committed artists to bring together their art, as the catalogue stresses, 'in the service of the working people'.
  44. ↑ "Ken Sprague: An Exhibition of Posters, Prints, Sculpture". Daily Telegraph. 8 December 1977. p. 15, col 2. Retrieved 20 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  45. ↑ "Gallery Guide". Illustrated London News. 1 September 1981. p. 84, col 4. Retrieved 19 August 2026 – via Newspapers.com.
  46. ↑ Ken Sprague: Recent Works (exhibition catalogue). Newlyn Art Gallery. 1982. OCLC 501110410.
  47. ↑ "A World To Win: Posters of Protest & Revolution". 100 Archive. n.d. Retrieved 15 August 2026.

Further reading

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