Joaquin Salvador Lavado, who used to sign his cartoons under the name of Quino, was an Argentine cartoonist and caricaturist but was mainly an involved popular philosopher who helped us to understand and rethink through his sketches. He would denounce hypocrisy, double standards, the greed of predators, manipulation, and untruthful speeches.
His work crossed all borders and universalized the thoughts and feelings of entire generations, from different social classes or cultures. He exalted solidarity, pacifism, justice and non-discrimination, contributing with his humanist vision a profound approach to banal or exceptional situations.
Mafalda became his flagship, though he soon stopped illustrating her, as he didn’t want to exhaust his genial creature. He passed away before seeing capitalism biting the dust. “Even capitalism will go to hell. It’s not going to work like this. I just hope that some sort of socialism will take place in the long term. I don’t mean the one that’s just gone, even if in my opinion that remains the best government system”, he said in 2004 during an interview for Playboy.
In the same interview, he had been asked what his drawings were about and he replied “about the relationship between the weak and the powerful. This feeling has always tortured me. The feeling of impotence that the poor have in front of the rich, of the duties of servants towards the masters; I don’t know, sometimes I think I should stop working for a while, to avoid feeling distress or the fear of repeating myself. But when I think about me opening a newspaper and not finding any of my pictures, I get even more stressed out and so I keep on drawing”.
Today, at the age of 88 years old, his heart ceased to beat, but this universal Argentinian will stay alive in everybody’s heart and memory.
A lot of tributes have been posted today on social networks. See some below.
Translation by Roberta Mereu from the voluntary Pressenza translation team. We are looking for volunteers!
Se fue mi segundo Papá.
Gracias por todo #Quino
(1932-2020)
? pic.twitter.com/v12TCQExyo— Miguel Rep (@miguelrep) September 30, 2020
Quino nos deixou hoje, mas sua filha Mafalda segue com a luta!
✊✏️@brasil247 @MafaldaDigital pic.twitter.com/1fND88gtmR— Carlos Latuff (@LatuffCartoons) September 30, 2020
¿Y AHORA?#Mafalda
Gracias por tanto maestro#Quino #QuinoEterno pic.twitter.com/jjPBJtEv0d— #ROFerrer (@RoFerrerIlustra) September 30, 2020
¿Y AHORA?#Mafalda
Gracias por tanto maestro#Quino #QuinoEterno pic.twitter.com/jjPBJtEv0d— #ROFerrer (@RoFerrerIlustra) September 30, 2020
Translation by Roberta Mereu from the voluntary Pressenza translation team. We are looking for volunteers!
