Farewell to Guillermo Mordillo Menéndez, the cartoonist of good-natured humor

The great cartoonist Guillermo Mordillo Menéndez, simply Mordillo to everyone, has passed away in Palma de Mallorca at the age of 86. Born in Buenos Aires in 1932 to a family that had emigrated from Spain, Mordillo began drawing as a child and from the age of eighteen worked as an illustrator of children’s books and traveled to different countries, from Peru to the United States, from France to Spain, where he continued uninterruptedly to study and work. In 1952 he founded Estudios Galas, and in New York, where he moved in 1960, he worked at Paramount, where he was one of the animators of Popeye, while in France he worked with Paris Match magazine. In Italy, his strips were popularized by the magazine Il Guerin Sportivoandwere included in many school diaries.

The famous white, good-natured, big-nosed characters typical of Mordillo’s illustrations were born in the 1970s.During this period Mordillo became one of the world’s best-known and most sought-after cartoonists. His cartoons are characterized by their marked humor, the absence of text (his characters express themselves with gestures), the poetics of opposites, multiple levels of reading, and the ability to appeal to a diverse audience, consisting of both children and adults. Cartoons have also been made from his comics.

Numerous awards have been received by Mordillo: among them, the Silver Medal at the 5th International Biennial of Humor Drawing in Tolentino in 1969, the Phoenix de l’Humour in 1973, the Best Cartoonist of the Year Award at the Montreal International Humor Salon in 1978, two Palme d’Oro (1977 and 1983) at the Bordighera Humor Salon, the Yellow Kid Award at the 16th International Comics Salon in Lucca (1984), the Andersen Award in 1985, and the Gold Medal at the 18th Tolentino Humor Salon. In 2002 he had also been on the jury of the Cartoons on the bay event.

Farewell to Guillermo Mordillo Menéndez, the cartoonist of good-natured humor

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