Quino
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Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino, is an Argentine cartoonist born on July 17, 1932 in Mendoza. His comic strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is very popular in Latin America and many parts of Europe.
Quino's universe
Quino's strips and cartoons feature no talking animals or animated toys: his main characters are ordinary people with ordinary feelings. If the situations are often surreal or allegorical (like the operating room with Errare humanum est written over the door, or the riot police throwing valium into protesters' open mouths), the personalities and reactions are very real and familiar — only magnified to caricatural proportions. Thus, although the conception of his Mafalda strip superficially resembles those of other children-centered strips, such as Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts — including the kids' incongruous concern for adult topics like world politics — Quino's characters can still be seen by readers as real children, with real (if caricatured) children's minds and real parents, rather than the stylized "adults in children's bodies" of Schulz's world. In that respect, Mafalda is closer to Bill Watterson's Calvin (with the exception that, instead of Calvin's easy and frequent escapism into his fantasy world, Mafalda and friends prefer to satirize an unescapable reality).
Quino's humor is characteristically bitter or even cynical, often dwelling on the misery and absurdity of human existence — independently of one's station in life — in face of bureaucracy, misused authority and wasteful, useless institutions, confining dogmas, and the narrow-mindedness of fellow humans. This is not to say that Quino's cartoons are intently philosophical, but they will resort to philosophy if it works as a vehicle for them to carry a message of social relevance, which readers reportedly (and not rarely) find to be eye-opening. Thus, he portrays misery without euphemisms, and each cartoon is just a snapshot of that misery. Reduction to absurd is not as rare as a comedic device, but more often than not, the joke derives from gleaning profound irony from the situation being discussed. His cartoons seem to say, very much in accord with the way Latin Americans use humor to relieve the pressure of political or economical oppression, let's have a laugh at life, as humor is the best way to face this harsh reality.
Quino's focus on how grim life is betrays a inner conviction that it ought to be good, and a deep sympathy for life's mostly innocent victims — employees, children, housewives, pensioners, obscure artists, unrecognized heroes — in spite of their very human failings and limitations. Even in his caricatures of oppressive bosses and unfeeling bureaucrats one can glance some sympathy: for they too are, after all, only victims of their own stupidity. Quino's world view is easy to explain in light of Argentina's vicissitudes over the last forty years; and his mixture of pessimism and humanism is one of the reasons for his immense popularity in Latin America.
Prizes and honors
- The kind of ideas that he works with are one of the most difficult, and I am amazed at their variety and depth. Also, he knows how to draw, and to draw in a funny way. I think that he is a giant. — Charles M. Schulz
Quino has won many international prizes and honors throughout his career. In 1982, Quino was chosen Cartoonist of the Year by fellow cartoonists around the world, and has won twice the Konex Platinum Prize for Visual Arts. In 2000 he received the second Quevedos Prize for graphical humour.
External link
- Quino's official webpage (http://www.clubcultura.com/clubhumor/quino/ingles/index.htm) (English)de:Quino