[3] The historian Shawn McDaniel writes that: "No other Cuban has influenced the way Americans consume popular print culture more than Lamarque did.

"[5] This statement places Lamarque on a high pedestal against other Cubans like Miguel Ángel Quevedo and Conrado Walter Massaguer.

[5] In 1917, when Lamarque was twelve years old, his father placed him on board the SS Munamar of the Munson Steamship Line to study the English language and business administration in the city of Brooklyn.

[5] In 1919, at the age of 15, Lamarque's first cartoon was published in the New York World-Telegram and Evening Mail, in the Boy Scout section of that newspaper.

[6][7][8] With the follow-on collapsing sugar market and economic crash in Cuba, Lamarque's parents could no longer afford his studies in America.

[5] Lamarque then was employed as an amateur graphic artist by his uncle, Eduardo Abril Amores, at Diario de Cuba.

[5] In the Diario de Cuba, Lamarque engaged in political caricatures; mocking Mario García Menocal and critiquing US intervention.

[5] Between 1923 and 1924, Lamarque was hired as a professional caricaturist and director of "The Week in Caricature" for the New York World-Telegram and Evening Mail, the same publication that had printed his very first cartoon.

The character of Monguito Petit Pois was a "hapless soul, fully dressed in a business suit and hat, who kept getting into tricky situations.

[5] Monguito, while it was distributed across the whole of the Latin American world (including the Philippines), was written specifically for the people of Santiago de Cuba, who instantly recognized the person the character most accurately represented.

[5] In 1925, Lamarque published a booklet called Primer Curso de Caricaturas, which was an instructional notebook teaching the craft of cartooning.

It may mean that children will be drawing their own comics soon, that photographs of friends may be sent in outline by a similar device, that the man who is talking to you over the radio may first be drawn by you and then heard.

[5] Lamarque was consequently in this role, the first art director ever to oversee; As the art director for Dell Publishing, Lamarque drew caricatures and portraits of Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin, Doug Fairbanks, Rudolph Valentino, Buster Keaton, John Barrymore, Morris Gest, Mary Pickford, Dolores del Río, Groucho Marx, and Joan Crawford.

[2] Lamarque was also a successful lecturer of a curriculum that he called Editorial Layout Workshops, to teach his Bauhaus-inspired guidelines for page design.

"[10] Lamarque's career in the art of illusion was a pastime for him - he remained gainfully employed in the magazine business, but became a good enough magician to perform for public audiences beginning in the 1930s.

[2] Some of Lamarque's magic performances were hosted in adult-themed burlesque bars and the Playboy Club, and his female assistants were not always fully clothed, as evidenced in certain photographs in the Smithsonian archives, such as this one (content warning): https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/abril-lamarque-performing-magic-tricks-14420 However, Lamarque also performed magic for people of all ages, and did not rely solely on the assistance of a topless woman.

[2] Lamarque was also a regular contributor to Hugard's Magic Monthly, creating graphic art and drawings for articles such as "How to Save Face After Laying an Egg," and "Foiling the Gremlins.