Cartoonist Guillermo Mordillo is dead | Culture | '
Even in public life Mordillo was omnipresent with his drawings until well into the 1990s: his short humoristic clips ran on television and on screens in subway stations and other public places. In addition to cartoons and books, there are still calendars, posters, stuffed animals and puzzles from and around Mordillo's characters to buy worldwide.
Tied by Disney
That Mordillo would become such a famous draftsman, however, was not foreseeable from the beginning, because the son of Spanish immigrants grew up in simple circumstances in Buenos Aires. His father was an electrician, his mother a domestic worker. Early Mordillo developed two passions: football and drawing. As a five-year-old he had watched Walt Disney's "Snow White" film adaptation in the cinema and was so impressed by the seven-dwarf's noses that he has not stopped drawing ever since. Although he later attended a journalism school, but graduated in design.
Not only human figures but also animals were given the characteristic bulbous nose by Mordillo. Here is a giraffe drawing Mordillo at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2012
At 18, he began to illustrate children's books and made his first experiences with animation shortly thereafter. In 1955 he became art director at an international advertising agency in the Peruvian Lima. At the same time he began to draw greeting cards. These were already full of the eyebrow-eyed, bulbous-like figures that would later become his trademark. At the time, Mordillo worked for US postcard manufacturer Hallmark. Thanks to his good contacts, he moved to New York for three years in 1960, where he eventually worked in the world-famous Paramount animation studios, drawing for cartoon series such as Popeye and Little Lulu.
Speechless in Paris
In 1963 he finally moved to Paris with only $ 150 in his pocket and without speaking a word of French, where he lived and worked until 1980. He had actually wanted to move to London, but was hired on the way there by the French publisher Mic-Mac – and stayed. After three years with Mic-Mac, he offered his picture stories to various magazines. "Le Pèlerin", "Paris Match" and "Lui" are just a few of the well-known titles in which his picture stories appeared from then on. Shortly thereafter, the reportage magazine "Stern" moved in Germany. His first cartoon collection in book form called "The Pirate Ship" and was a huge success. This was followed by animated films, posters, puzzles, calendars, stationery, T-shirts, sportswear and stuffed animals. In the early 1970s, Mordillo is one of the largest living comic artists in the world.
Mordillo did not need words for his cartoons
The great success of his tubers is probably because they are understood all over the world – because they do not speak. In this respect, they reflect Mordillo's own experiences in several foreign countries, where he had to penetrate directly into the world of work, without mastering the national language. At an advanced age, he once said, "I speak five languages, but the best thing I know is the language of the drawing, because it is understood everywhere."
The themes of his picture stories are universal, they tell of love, loneliness and togetherness. His characters often find themselves in difficult situations, but there is always hope. Mordillo himself once called his humor a kind of "tenderness that helps overcome fear". For his outstanding lifetime achievement, Mordillo received numerous awards and accolades. Since 1980, Mordillo lived with his wife and their children in Mallorca before moving to 1997 to Monaco.
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