The dean of Argentine cartoonists, Juan Carlos Colombres, dies at 94
Juan Carlos Colombres, an editor, humorist, and cartoonist whose work lampooned Argentine mores and politics for 70 years, died yesterday in Buenos Aires.
Popularly known by his byline, Landrú, he was 94.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1923 to a well to-do family from the northwest, Colombres began his career in journalism in 1945 as a commentator and editorial cartoonist for 'Don Fulgencio', a satirical magazine. Colombres developed a naïf drawing style, incorporating his trademark smiling cat as a silent witness, and adopting a pseudonym (a custom among Argentine cartoonists): Landrú.
A decade later, in 1957, he co-founded what became his most successful undertaking: the satirical weekly 'Tía (Aunt) Vicenta'.
Family connections afforded Colombres rare access to business elites and the military inner circle, giving 'Tía Vicenta' the inside track on many of the political intrigues of the day. He made ingenious use of epigrams with teasers such as "why are you all looking at me?" to clue readers in on brewing - but still secret - controversies.
After the subject of one such series in 1958 (Vice President Alejandro Gómez) resigned just a few weeks later, Tía Vicenta's readership jumped to over 200,000 a week, with peaks of 450,000 - becoming the country's most popular current events magazine.
Its very access and biting wit would become its undoing when, after a 1966 coup, Colombres used his knowledge that Gen. Juan Carlos Onganía was referred to as the "walrus" by fellow generals to lampoon the new dictator with two walruses on that week's cover declaring: "finally! A right and Godly government!"
Tía Vicenta was promptly shut down by the new dictatorship, and his career as a publisher never recovered.
Colombres was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot prize by Columbia University in 1971. He later began contributing editorial cartoons for the nation's largest daily, Clarín, in 1975.
He continued poking fun at stodgy politicians and businessmen - even during Argentina's brutal 1976-83 dictatorship, when he often referred to the wiry (and wily) dictator, Gen. Jorge Videla, as the "Pink Panther."
Many of his stock characters alluded to upper-class pretentiousness as he saw it; one such character - the self-righteous but philandering "pillar of society" Señor Porcel - had been patterned, he later revealed, after his own father. Porcel's wife, Señora Gorda, in turn symbolized self-absorbed upper-class women, and would become one of his most lasting characters.
His weekly column in Clarín's culinary insert likewise offered "recipes" whose ingredients were puns alluding to Argentine current events.
Colombres' work became more infrequent after being shot in the right hand in a 1994 robbery. He was named an Illustrious Citizen by the City of Buenos Aires in 2003, and in 2014 made his last public appearance to unveil a mural with his smiling cat in Buenos Aires' Cartoon Promenade.
At: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.clarin.com%2Fsociedad%2Fmurio-landru-destacados-humoristas-graficos-pais_0_BkXhuba4b.html
Colombres ("Landrú"
and friends.