Guillermo Mordillo

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Mordillo (2012)

Guillermo Mordillo (born August 4, 1932 in Buenos Aires , † June 29, 2019 in Palmanova , Mallorca ) was an Argentine humorous draftsman .

Life

As the son of Spanish immigrants - her father was an electrician, his mother domestic workers - spent Mordillo his childhood in the district of Villa Pueyrredón in Buenos Aires . Even as a child “at the age of two or three” he was interested in drawing and completed his training as an illustrator in 1948 with a diploma at the local journalism school. In the following two years he illustrated children's books . He later moved to the studio of the Argentine animation pioneer José Burone Bruché, who had founded his own company in 1950, and was involved as a draftsman in several fairy tale films, such as Cuentos de Perrault (Stories by Perrault), Cuentos de Schmid (Stories by Schmid), Los músicos de Bremen (Bremen Town Musicians) and Los tres cerditos (The three little pigs). In 1952 Mordillo helped found the Galas Studios . On November 7, 1955, he went to Lima as a freelance commercial artist , where he worked as an art director for the McCann Erickson agency . In 1958 he illustrated the fables of Aesop . Since he also worked for the US postcard manufacturer Hallmark Cards , he moved to New York in 1960 , where he was hired by the Paramount Pictures film studio and was employed as an illustrator for popular cartoon series such as Popeye and Little Lulu . He also designed two characters for the short film Trick for Tree . In 1961 he made greeting cards for OZ Greeting Cards (New York).

In August 1963, Mordillo allegedly traveled to Paris with only $ 150 and without any knowledge of French, where he arrived on September 19, 1963 and initially wrote humorous letters for the Mic-Mac publishing house . From July 1966 he drew for the magazines Le Pelerin and Paris Match . Two years later, the German star began printing its comic strips. The French publisher Editions Glénat became the main marketer of Mordillo's works in the early 1970s, the worldwide success of which began with the cartoon series The Pirate Ship . Numerous merchandising products quickly found sales, such as posters, calendars, items of clothing, soft toys, postcards, play figures and puzzles, as well as CD-ROMs, school items and a computer game. Mordillo then became one of the most commercially successful draftsmen. His figures with their characteristic large, round noses are also very well known from the advertising spots for the ARD television lottery Ein Platz am Sonne in the 1980s . Since the 1970s, Mordillo has published his works in Germany with Heye-Verlag .

In Paris he met his future wife Amparo Camarasa, whom he married in 1969 and with whom he has two children: Sebastian Jerome (* 1970) and Cecile Isabelle (* 1972). In 1980 the illustrator moved to Mallorca , about which he said: "Nowhere else can you sit at a table and as a foreigner you are guaranteed not to be a minority." In the same year he became President of the International Association of Authors of Comics and Cartoons (AIAC) in Geneva . After spending 18 years in Spain, Mordillo returned to France in 1998, but initially kept his property on Mallorca.

Critics were bothered by Mordillo's commercial orientation, who said of himself that at least at the beginning of his career he felt like a journalist rather than an artist. Only when cartoons are hanging in museums like the Louvre or the Prado is he ready to talk about art. He worked regularly for advertising, u. a. for a neighboring golf course in Santa Ponça on Mallorca: “Very early on the caricatures had a political message. I think there is a political idea in each of my works, but second and not first. ”His characters have no individual character, are often naked, never underlaid with texts and are therefore considered“ universal ”and understandable worldwide. Since 2007, the draftsman has also been marketing his autographed works on the Internet under the Mordillo Collection . In 2012 he drew for the movie Crazy Island .

Mordillo has received numerous international awards for his work, including a. In 1977 he was named the best draftsman in the world at the Salon International de L'Humour in Montreal, Canada , and in 1992 he was ranked third out of 245 draftsmen from 46 countries by the US trade magazine Witty World . On November 6, 1997, Mordillo was awarded the honorary professorship for humor from the university in Alcalá de Henares , Spain . He was the recipient of the silver medal at the 5th Biennale of international humorous draftsmen in Tolentino (Italy), the gold medal of the Argentinean draftsmen and the French Palme d'Or.

He was a grandfather since 2003. In addition to Spanish, he also spoke English and French, played golf and lived in Monaco . He died on June 29, 2019 at the age of 86 in Mallorca.

Reaction to the Charlie Hebdo editorial team after the attack

After the attack on the editors of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on January 7, 2015 in Paris, Mordillo said that he had drawn a “sad clown with a pencil in his hand” that day: “You know, the essence of humor was tenderness and fear for me for a long time. Now all that's left of it is fear. For me a new division has to be found in the history of humor: before and after Charlie Hebdo . It will never be the same again. ”He criticized the fact that the solidarity with his colleagues had come too late because they had been threatened by an attack“ for years ”.

Work style

Mordillo saw himself as “more of a designer” and made a preliminary drawing with pencil or ink, which he later colored. Usually he worked on several cartoons at the same time to avoid monotony. In the course of a day he therefore sometimes completed several works (well over 2000 in total), signed, dated and photographed them. He always had the “best ideas” before his afternoon nap, said Mordillo in old age. In 2005 he justified his renunciation of words as follows: “My pictures have no texts because I spent many years in countries whose language I could not speak properly at first, and I did not dare to write captions.” His original pictures did not sell Mordillo, only the right of reproduction and distribution.

Mordillo quotes

  • “After God created the world, He created man and woman. To save the whole thing from going under, he invented humor. "
  • “It was the second day after I was born. I was born on the first, on the second I thought: I want to be a cartoonist. It must have been something like that. "
  • "I try not to listen to anyone and especially not to myself."
  • "Humor is the spirit that turns pirouettes in the midst of the eternal dance of life."

literature

  • Wolfgang Würker: tenderness of fear. Guillermo Mordillo and the little guys with the bulbous noses , in: Westermanns Monatshefte , July 1984, p. 25
  • Guillermo Mordillo: Mallorca is the perfect nowhere. Confessions of cartoonist Guillermo Mordillo , in: Merian , vol. 56/2003, p. 36

Works (selection)

Mordillo 2012 at the Frankfurt Book Fair
Mordillo 1974

Exhibitions

Web links

Commons : Guillermo Mordillo  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gallery Of Cartoons By Guillermo Mordillo - Argentina. In: Irancartoon. Retrieved June 30, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Wolfram Bickerich: Instructions for use for Mallorca , Munich / Berlin, 2009, unpag.E-Book.
  3. ↑ a b c Bernhard Baumgartner: Mona Lisa? A cartoon too! In: Wiener Zeitung . March 6, 2015, accessed on June 30, 2019 (interview with Mordillo).
  4. ↑ a b c Disy video: Guillermo Mordillo - a draftsman who never really gets old with his art. In: Disy Dresden. June 22, 2015, accessed June 30, 2019 (the video is available on YouTube ; 3:16 minutes).
  5. ^ Cartoonist Mordillo draws a film. In: bz-berlin.de . July 31, 2012, accessed June 30, 2019 .
  6. ↑ Fallece de Mallorca el argentino dibujante Guillemo Mordillo a los 86 años. In: efe.com . June 30, 2019, Retrieved June 30, 2019 (Spanish).
  7. ^ Mordillo without words: Cartoons to fall in love with October 21, 2005 - April 23, 2006. (pdf, 417 kB) Deutsches Fleischermuseum Böblingen, June 12, 2005, accessed on June 30, 2019 (flyer for the exhibition).
  8. ↑ Quoted from Robert Lutsch: Quotes that describe life , Norderstedt 2013, p. 69
  9. ↑ The Great Mordillo: Cartoons to Fall in Love with. In: Goodreads. Retrieved June 30, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Mordillo, Guillermo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Mordillo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION argentinian humorous draftsman
DATE OF BIRTH 4th August 1932
PLACE OF BIRTH Buenos Aires
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 2019
Place of death Palmanova (Mallorca)