In the '60s, I did many satirical portraits of dictators.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Dictators are ludicrous characters, and, you know, in my career and in my life, I've always enjoyed sort of inhabiting these ludicrous, larger-than-life characters that somehow exist in the real world.
I certainly was one of the instigators in the 1960s of freedom of expression.
I'm not a dictator. It's just that I have a grumpy face.
I was a terrible painter - my portraits looked like the evil chimera love-children of Picasso's demoiselles and the BBC test card clown.
I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.
Dictators are interesting, no?
It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me.
I came from two harsh dictatorships, Nazi and Stalinist. I never thought of becoming a writer as such, yet in a lucid moment, I recognised what I had to do.
I've played so many historical characters because most horrible dictators are short, fat, middle-aged men.
When I was starting out in 1988, I was doing cartoons on President George H. W. Bush, Iraq and the fall of Soviet Union.