An artist who pays tribute to others and the characters they created: Ricardo Martínez returns to La Fiambrera Art Gallery (Calle del Pez, 30) with a free exhibition featuring iconic and beloved characters from the world of comics such as Mafalda, Snoopy, Popeye, Mortadelo and Filemón, and Lucky Luke.
With this exhibition, Martínez brings together more than 30 characters that have accompanied him—and generations of comic book readers—throughout his life, created and drawn by such fundamental names in the genre as Charles Schulz, Alex Raymond, Francisco Ibáñez, Quino, Neal Adams, Hergé, Uderzo, Hal Foster, and Will Eisner.
This exhibition, which will bring back memories of childhood or adolescence for many, will be open to the public from February 21 to April 11, 2026. The artist himself will be present at the opening, which will take place this Saturday at 12:30 p.m.
A different technique: what is scratchboard?
Image courtesy of: La Fiambrera Art Gallery
Ricardo Martínez’s versions of these well-known characters are created using a technique that is as laborious as it is perhaps little known: scratchboard, which “consists of scraping a blade across paper covered with a layer of black-painted plaster. In other words, you start with black and gradually remove the white, as if sculpting on paper,” in the words of the artist.
In addition, each one has been treated differently to imitate the style of each of the creators being honored: “I have tried to reproduce the shaky hand of Charles Schulz in his later years in Peanuts, the fluid brushstrokes of Alex Raymond in Flash Gordon, and the dynamism of the lines and spots in Jordi Bernet’s Torpedo.”