Quino

Joaquín Salvador Lavado
Quino in Paris in 2004.
Born	(1932-07-17) July 17, 1932 (age 84) Mendoza, Argentina
Nationality	Argentine
Area(s)	Cartoonist
Pseudonym(s)	Quino
Notable works	Mafalda

Joaquín Salvador Lavado, better known by his pen name Quino (Spanish: [ˈkino]; born 17 July 1932), is an Argentine cartoonist. His comic strip Mafalda (which ran from 1964 to 1973) is very popular in Latin America and many parts of Europe.

Joaquín Salvador Lavado was born in Mendoza, Argentina, on 17 July 1932. He was called "Quino" since childhood, to distinguish him from his uncle, the illustrator Joaquín, who helped to awaken his vocation of cartooning at an early age. In 1945, after the death of his mother, he enrolled and started his studies at Escuela de Bellas Artes de Mendoza. Shortly after, his father died when Quino was 16 years old; a year later he abandoned his studies, with the intent to become a cartoonist. Soon he would sell his first illustration, an advertisement for a fabric store.

His first humor page was published in the weekly magazine Esto Es, which led to the publication of other works in many other magazines: Leoplán, TV Guía, Vea y Lea, Damas y Damitas, Usted, Panorama, Adán, Atlántida, Che, el diario Democracia, etc.

In 1954, his cartoons became regulars in Rico Tipo, Tía Vicenta and Dr. Merengue. After this, he started to make more advertisement illustrations. On 21 May 2014, he was given the Premio Príncipe de Asturias de Comunicación y Humanidades. This prize was validated on 25 October of the same year, 2014, when he received a statuette designed by the painter and sculptor Joan Miró.

His first compilation book, Mundo Quino, was published in 1963, while he was developing pages for a covert advertising campaign for Mansfield, an electrical household appliance company, for which he created the character of Mafalda. The advertising campaign was never executed, which led to the publication of Mafalda’s first story to be published in Leoplán, after this, it started to be published regularly in the weekly magazine Primera Plana, 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 is published, it starts to be edited in Italy, Spain (due to the censorship, it is tagged as “only for adults”), Portugal and many others.