Mendoza (Argentina), 1932
By Graciela Hopstein
Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known as Quino, is one of the most important cartoonists in Latin America and is published worldwide. The son of Spanish immigrants from Andalusia, he was born on July 17, 1932, although official records state his birth date as August 17. The loss of his parents during his adolescence—his mother died in 1945 and his father three years later—made him a solitary and taciturn young man, and this isolation fostered his dedication to drawing, guided by his uncle Joaquín Tejón, a professional illustrator.
He began his studies at the School of Fine Arts at the University of Cuyo but dropped out a few years later. At eighteen, he traveled to Buenos Aires to try his luck with his drawings, visiting various newspaper and magazine offices and returning to Mendoza a few weeks later without finding work. Although this first trip was fruitless, after completing his military service in 1954, Quino settled permanently as a cartoonist in Buenos Aires.
His first humor page was published in the weekly Esto es, and from that moment on, his work began to be disseminated in various other outlets, such as the magazine Tía Vicenta, directed by the well-known humorist Ladrú. During this period, he also began illustrating advertising campaigns, a task he continued throughout his life.
The 1960s brought new changes to Quino’s life: he married Alicia Colombo and held his first exhibition in a bookstore in Buenos Aires. It was also during this period that his first book, Mundo Quino, was published, a compilation of illustrations with a preface by Miguel Brascó. It was Brascó who introduced him to Agens Publicidad, which was looking for an illustrator to create a comic strip to promote the launch of a line of household appliances. As the brand name was Mansfield, some characters in the comic had to start with the letter M. This is how Mafalda was born, named after a character from the Argentine film Dar la cara, directed by José Martínez Suárez.
However, the campaign project was never realized, and a year later, the Argentine weekly Primera Plana asked him for a regular contribution. Thus, in 1965, the stories of Mafalda, his most famous character and the one with the greatest international visibility, were definitively born.
Mafalda—a curious and restless girl born into a typical middle-class porteña family—is a critic and prone to philosophizing about any political or everyday event. Her comments and ideas mirror the social and political concerns of the 1960s. Among her passions are the Beatles, peace, human rights, and democracy. Her most evident dislikes include injustice, war, nuclear weapons, racism, the absurd conventions of adults, and, of course, soup. She is, as Umberto Eco aptly described her:
an irascible heroine who rejects the world as it is, claiming her right to remain a girl who does not want to be responsible for a universe distorted by her parents.
Mafalda’s world consists of her parents, her younger brother Guille—who was born a few years later—and her friends Felipe, Manolito, Susanita, Miguelito, and Libertad, most of whom were inspired by real-life characters close to the author’s life.
Mafalda’s journey spans the years 1964 to 1973, across three publications: Primera Plana, El Mundo, and Siete Días Ilustrados. Long before the official farewell of the comic strip, Quino realized that he was exhausted, that “Mafalda had fulfilled her purpose,” and that he could not continue without repeating himself, as he had always resisted losing personal contact with his creation.
In 1968, Mafalda reached Europe, first in Italy and then in Spain, where her success was almost as remarkable as in Buenos Aires. Later, she was translated into more than ten languages, gaining notable international popularity.
Although Mafalda ceased to be produced in 1973, the well-known comic strip was published in various versions and even lent to humanitarian campaigns, notably productions in defense of childhood for the Buenos Aires Children’s Hospital, UNICEF, and the Spanish Red Cross.
Although Quino’s work is unthinkable without Mafalda, the author’s production is vast and diverse, with titles such as Gente en su sitio, Humano se nace, and others produced with texts by Jorge Timossi, among which Que mala es la gente and A mí no me grite stand out. His work has undoubtedly given him great international visibility, making him the most well-known cartoonist in Latin America. Quino is, above all, an observer of his time and human nature.
In 2014, Mafalda celebrated fifty years of existence, and the cartoonist received various tributes. Among them, he was awarded the Order of the Legion of Honor from France and the Prince of Asturias Award for Communication and Humanities. In 2015, he received the Medal of Order for Artistic and Cultural Merit Pablo Neruda from the President of Chile, Michelle Bachelet.
