Quino, creator of beloved cartoon character mafalda, dies

Social networks, meanwhile, fizzed with messages of gratitude from institutions including Amnesty International, UNESCO, the Spanish Royal Academy, while countless individual admirers expressed their sadness at the news. Quino masterfully combined irony, acidity and tenderness in his vast output.

The renowned Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, known universally as Quino, died this Wednesday at the age of 88, as confirmed by his editor, Daniel Divinsky, .

His characters were often ordinary people: children, housewives, employees being exploited by their bosses, the victims of the absurd, authoritarianism and their own limitations. Each graphic joke was a short story in itself, hilarious and sometimes heartbreakingly sad. A master of his craft, Quino was highly respected by his peers both in Argentina and across the world.

Mafalda , created in , became popular in newspapers across Latin America, Europe and much of Asia before being turned into a best-selling series of books. Quino died in Mendoza, where he was born to Spanish immigrant parents in I discovered that people, horses, trains, mountains could come from something as simple as a pencil Quino was always a lone wolf, although he acknowledged inspiration from Peanuts by Charles Schulz in the United States, which preceded Mafalda by a few years.

In interviews, he often explained that it was his problems with verbal communication that eventually pushed him to create his iconic character. Upon arrival in the capital, Quino suffered three years of economic hardship. Eventually, in , his first cartoon was published in weekly Esto es, a moment that he often described as "the happiest" of his life.

Soon after, Qunio began publishing his work in other outlets.

The Argentine cartoonist Joaquín Salvador Lavado, who created the character Mafalda, has died aged 88 in Mendoza, the city where he was born.

With time, his creations were being reproduced across Latin America and later in Europe. In , he married the love of his life, Alicia Colombo, which was followed by another landmark in the release of his first compilation book, Mundo Quino. Spanish newspaper El Mundo quickly picked up the comic strip and before you knew it, Mafalda and her friends were going global.

When the first compilation of Mafalda comic strips appeared in book form in , it sold out in two days.