MINGOTE. (BRIEF) HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE

The Fundación Colección ABC presents at the Ethnographic Museum of Castilla y León, with the collaboration of Caser Seguros, a selection of originals of Antonio Mingote’s masterpiece, Historia de la Gente (History of the People)

On 12 October 1980, Antonio Mingote (Sitges, 1919 – Madrid, 2012) began to publish his new Historia de la Gente in “Los Domingos de ABC”. A first, smaller series had been published in the magazine “Semana” in 1954, and a year later in book format (Ed. Taurus). With the new 1980 edition, Mingote aimed to “say the things that I could not say before, with the censorship, and to make drawings, which surely would not have been tolerated”. In this new version of Historia de la Gente, Antonio Mingote continued his excellent and sublime journalistic work, talking about the moment, about everyday issues: “I have taken the history of old people as a pretext to talk about the people of today, in other words, to continue doing what I do in the newspaper: to talk about people, which is my subject. […] I think everyone has a theme, and mine is that, the bizarre behaviour of people, their capacity for great heroics and enormous foolishness, small successes and immense mistakes. But my purpose is, above all, to make something fun. I have no other pretensions, at least not confessable ones. Well, I’ll confess one: I’d like to show how stupid and cruel humanity can be, especially those people who take themselves so seriously, who take homo sapiens literally. All fanatics are fanatics because they take themselves so seriously. My aim is not to preach virtue, or good sense, or anything else.

Antonio Mingote concluded his Historia de la Gente in “Los Domingos de ABC” on 27 November 1983 and it is considered by many to be the author’s greatest work. It was an unprecedented success in the annals of Spanish humour. Of the 554 drawings that make up the series, this exhibition, (Breve) Historia de la Gente, brings together 250 drawings, hence the qualifier “brief” that we have added. The selection presented here maintains the discourse and the spark that its creator wanted to give to the work, and we have placed special interest in those themes that overfly all of Mingote’s work: human confrontations and conflicts, poverty, the conservation of nature, art, education and culture, the enjoyment of life…, universal themes, which have not ceased to be of interest every day and in our days because they are so obvious.

Writer, academic of the language, Doctor Honoris Causa of two universities… but, above all, cartoonist and humorist. Mingote is considered one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century and a genius of graphic humour.

 

MINGOTE’S HISTORY

Antonio Mingote was born in Sitges on 17 January 1919.

In 1932, when he was only 13 years old, he drew the rabbit “Roenueces” and sent it to the children’s supplement Gente Menuda in Blanco y Negro, which published it in its pages. This would be the beginning of a long relationship.

Antonio Mingote began his professional career as a military man and it was at the Infantry Transformation Academy in Guadalajara that he began to collaborate in journalism, in the magazine “La Cabra”. In 1944 he moved to Madrid and two years later he began to collaborate with “La Codorniz”, where he became one of its star illustrators. In 1948 he left the army to devote himself exclusively to drawing and writing. From that moment on, his life was a non-stop drawing and writing activity. His collaborations with the daily and weekly press stand out. In 1953 he began to collaborate with the newspaper ABC, with which he remained linked until his death. He was the founder of the humorous weekly Don José. In addition to Historia de la Gente, he published monographic works of humour such as Hombre solo, Solo pobres, El Mus; informative works such as ¡Viva la ciencia! in collaboration with the scientist José Manuel Sánchez Ron; and illustrated editions such as the one he produced of Don Quixote, produced by the publishing house Planeta to mark the 4th centenary of the first publication of Cervantes’ classic.

Throughout his productive life he received countless awards: Gold Medal of the Círculo de Bellas Artes, the Knight’s Cross of the Order of Isabel la Católica, Víctor de la Serna Award of the Press Association of Madrid, National Journalism Award, Gold Medal for Merit at Work, Gold Medal of the City Council of Madrid, the Ibero-American Graphic Humour Quevedos Award, Gold Medal for Fine Arts and Merit at Work of the Community of Madrid,…. Special mention should be made of his appointment, by Enrique Tierno Galván, as “Honorary Mayor of the Retiro”; the creation of the “MINGOTE” graphic award by the ABC newspaper; his appointment as “Doctor Honoris Causa” by the Universities of Alcalá de Henares and Rey Juan Carlos; his election by the Royal Spanish Academy to occupy the “r” chair, which made him the first cartoonist to join the institution; and the title of Marquis of Daroca awarded by the King for “the outstanding, helpful and creative professional career of Ángel Antonio Mingote Barrachina as a illustrator, writer and academic”.

Antonio Mingote died in Madrid on 3 April 2012.