Few girls are as famous as Mafalda, the cartoon character created by artist Joaquín Salvador (better known as Quino). At first, the funny girl with abundant black hair was designed to promote household appliances of the Mansfield company. Over time, she made a niche for herself in media such as El Mundo or Lepolán, and with her witticisms she became the voice of Argentine society in the sixties. He has given us unforgettable phrases, some of them with a great hidden lesson (“Could it be that in this world there are more and more people and less and less?)
To celebrate the 60th anniversary of Mafalda’s first appearance in the press, Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial (PRHGE) has donated a statue of the famous character to the Madrid City Council. The work, created by the artist Pablo Irrgang, arrived from Argentina to the cultural enclave Matadero Madrid on Monday, October 28.
This is the twelfth statue of Mafalda in the world: 80 centimeters tall and weighing 20 kilograms, sitting on a bench much bigger than she is. Quino (2014 Prince of Asturias Award), who collaborated with Irrgang in 2009 to create the first statue of the little girl in Buenos Aires, wanted it to look exactly like this.
“My intention was to make Mafalda on a human scale and for people to be able to interact with her,” Irrgang comments. The artist also seeks to spread Mafalda’s message, which in many cases promotes humanism, pacifism and many other ‘isms’ that are worth remembering both today and in the 1960s.