A good caricaturist needs more than a brilliant sense of humour. Like a clown, he must have a great sense of compassion, tragedy, and concern. Emilio Coia had all these qualities in addition to his wonderful draughtsmanship.
n Who could disagree with Yehudi Menuhin's words once they view the truly superb display of over 80 Coia portrait drawings? It runs at Glasgow Art Club, 185 Bath Street, until June 6 and is a ''must see'' if ever there was one.
This memorial exhibition marks the death a year ago of one of Scotland's best-loved characters. Concurrently, at Edinburgh's Scottish National Portrait Gallery, there's a small display of recently-acquired sketchbooks and drawings (bought for a pittance from the rushed studio sale).
I await a full-scale retrospective plus major publication, for surely Coia - certainly the most important portrait draughtsman Scotland has produced over the past 60 years - deserves it.
Meanwhile, the art Club, his home-from-home for so many years, has done him proud with a well-illustrated catalogue containing contributions from, among others, Lord Macfarlane, Sir Alastair Dunnett, Roddy Martine, and myself.
Born in Glasgow in 1911 of Italian parents who ran ice-cream parlours in Dennistoun and Townhead, Coia attended Glasgow School of Art for five years before eloping to London with fellow student Marie Neale. They had #12 between them.
In the recessionary thirties he walked Fleet Street ''peddling his wares'', as he put it. As caricaturist for the Sunday Chronicle he drew everyone of note: Braque, Auden, T S Eliot, the Sitwells, Rebecca West, Max Beerbaum, Huxley, Spender, Charles Laughton, Augustus John (who drew Coia drawing him). In 1934, Coia had his first London solo show, but returned to Scotland, where he made his name with caricatures in the Daily Record and then the Scotsman.
For half a century he drew all the great actors, dancers, artists, and celebrities at the Edinburgh Festival. ''The face is to me the greatest visual miracle on this planet and a never-ending source of wonder,'' he once said.
Clare Henry
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