Jan 17, 2022
Forges' 80th Birthday
This Doodle’s Key Themes
Today’s Doodle celebrates Spanish cartoonist, author, television writer, and film director Antonio Fraguas de Pablo–better known by his pen name Forges–who is widely considered among the nation’s most significant graphic humorists of his era. In his signature style of simple, thick, black outlines, Forges provided the Spanish public with a satirical yet compassionate lens into some 50 years of the country’s history.
Antonio Fraguas de Pablo was born in Madrid, Spain on this day in 1942, and from a young age, he knew he wanted to become a cartoonist. At 14, he began to work as a technician for the public broadcaster Televisión Española, and while there, he published his first cartoon in the newspaper Pueblo in 1964. He continued to publish his cartoons over the following years, and in 1973, he finally left his job to realize his childhood dream of becoming a full-time cartoonist.
Forges quickly rose in popularity, filling newspaper pages with a subversive cast of cartoon characters who helped the public to process an unfolding evolution in Spanish society. Over the decades that followed, he put out many thousands of cartoons that explored everything from new technology to the discovery of the Higgs boson particle. A true creative powerhouse, Forges also directed films, wrote scripts for television comedies, published books of cartoons, and even wrote a novel.
Forges received countless accolades throughout his career, including Spain’s Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts in 2011.
Early drafts of the Doodle
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