Quino

Statue of Mafalda in the "Paseo de la Historieta", Buenos Aires

His first compilation book, Mundo Quino, was published in 1963. At the same time he was developing pages for an advertising campaign for Mansfield, an electrical household appliance company, for which he created the character of Mafalda, basing her name on the same sounds as in the Mansfield brand name.[2][3] The advertising campaign never was executed, which led to the publication of Mafalda’s first story in Leoplán. Subsequently, it appeared regularly in the weekly magazine Primera Plana,[10] since the director of the magazine was a friend of Quino. Between 1965 and 1967 it was published in the newspaper El Mundo; soon after the first compilation book was released, it began to be published in Italy, Spain (where, on account of Franco-era censorship, it was tagged as “for adults only”), Portugal, and many other countries.[11][12] It was also translated to 12 languages.

Mafalda was created as an irreverent and non-conformist six-year-old who hated fascism, militarism and soup, and loved the Beatles. The character attempted to reflect the world of adults as seen through the eyes of a smart child.[13][14] Her friends reflected different personalities like the insecure but studious Felipe, the gossip-girl Susanita, the sturdy but dim-witted Manolito, the naive Miguelito, the rebel and witty Libertad and Mafalda’s baby brother Guille. The character and the series has been compared to Charles M. Schulz's Peanuts comic series.[15]

Quino abandoned the story of Mafalda on 25 June 1973, claiming that he wanted to avoid repeating himself; in later years, however, he said that the changing political landscape in Latin America had also influenced his decision: "If I had continued drawing her, they would have shot me."[13][16] Following the 1976 coup d'état in Argentina, he moved to Milan, Italy, where he continued to create humor pages.[13][17] Although he never returned to Mafalda and her friends in a comic strip format, he did use the character at certain specific moments: to explain the Organic Law on the Right to Education (LODE) on a commission from the Spanish government in 1986,[2] for a COVID-19 awareness campaign in 2020,[18] and, in 1977, to illustrate the Declaration of the Rights of the Child for UNICEF.[19][20] Argentine producer Daniel Mallo converted 260 Mafalda strips into a TV show in 1965.[21]

In 2008, at the initiative of the Museo del Dibujo y la Ilustración, the company Subterráneos de Buenos Aires created a mural of Mafalda in the Perú metro station at the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires.[22] In 2009, Quino participated with an original Mafalda work, created for El Mundo, in the Bicentennial: 200 years of Graphic Humor that the Museo del Dibujo y la Ilustración held at the Eduardo Sívori Museum of Buenos Aires.[3]

Quino in 2004

While Mafalda continued to be used for human rights campaigns in Argentina and abroad, Quino dedicated himself to writing other editorial-style comics. The comics were published in Argentina and abroad. Since 1982, the Argentine newspaper Clarín has published his cartoons weekly.[23]

After a visit with Cuban cartoon director Juan Padrón, the two produced a series of cartoons. Between 1986 and 1988, they made six Quinoscopio cartoons through the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos, none of which were longer than six minutes.[24] In addition, the pair worked on 104 short Mafalda cartoons in 1994. Quino eventually retired in 2006.[3] While Mafalda concentrated on children and their innocent, realistic view of the world, his later comics featured ordinary people with ordinary feelings.[25] The humor is characteristically cynical, often poking fun at real-life situations, such as marriage, technology, authority, and food. This cynical humor is attributed as one of the reasons for his success throughout Latin America and much of the world outside Latin America.[13][25] His cartoons of aporteñado Argentine topic of the 1960s and 1970s have been edited and translated into 26 different languages apart from the original Rioplatense Spanish.[13][26] Collected in numerous volumes by Argentine publisher Ediciones de la Flor, these comics are readily available.[27]