Pierre Sadek, Lebanon’s pioneering satirist, acquired indisputable fame over 53 years of working for Lebanese newspapers and television. Sadek, armed with a sharp eye and an even sharper pen, used his caricatures to reflect his political analyses until his death in 2013. “Picturing History,” an exhibition at the Sursock Museum in Beirut created in partnership with the Pierre Sadek Foundation, displays 720 of his drawings. The exhibition opened on Feb. 8 and runs until April 30.

The drawings on display are just a small selection of the 30,000 illustrations, TV animations and book covers that Sadek left when he died five years ago. His family created the foundation to maintain his legacy.

“We never thought of his work locked in a closet,” Ghada Sadek Abel, Sadek’s daughter and founder of the foundation, told Al-Monitor. “It’s still relevant today. I can see that when I post drawings online people really identify with them. The foundation’s objective is to preserve his work and pass it on to the next generation, because it depicts not only our national history but the history of the whole region. His drawings reflect what has happened in the country, region and the world, with big events, elections, wars and key personalities.”

The exhibition contains a “censorship room” for Sadek’s censored work. “He was one of the pioneers of freedom of expression,” his daughter said. “He was also censoring himself, was threatened and arrested by the authorities and almost kidnapped in 1975. But he kept pointing his finger toward problems without being insulting.”