Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón (17 July 1932 – 30 September 2020), better known by his pen name Quino (Spanish: [ˈkino]), was an Argentine cartoonist.
His comic strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is popular in many parts of the Americas and Europe and has been praised for its use of social satire as a commentary on real-life issues.
[1] Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón was born in Mendoza, Argentina, on 17 July 1932 to emigrant Andalusian parents from Fuengirola, Málaga.
[2][3] He was called "Quino" from his childhood on, to distinguish him from his uncle, the illustrator Joaquín, who helped to awaken his vocation of cartooning at an early age.
Mafalda was created as an irreverent and non-conformist six-year-old who hated fascism, militarism and soup, and loved the Beatles.
[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.
[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.
[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] While Mafalda continued to be used for human rights campaigns in Argentina and abroad, Quino dedicated himself to writing other editorial-style comics.
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.
[25] The humor is characteristically cynical, often poking fun at real-life situations, such as marriage, technology, authority, and food.
[13][26] Collected in numerous volumes by Argentine publisher Ediciones de la Flor, these comics are readily available.
[9] He and his wife lived in exile in Milan starting in 1976, before returning to Argentina seven years later when the military dictatorship came to an end.