His full name was Joaquín Salvador Lavado Tejón. But everyone called him Quino, and to those closest to him, he was “Quinito.” The nickname was given to him when he was little, in his hometown of Mendoza, Argentina, in order to distinguish him from his uncle Joaquín. Quino liked to draw from an early age — his mother recalls that he was allowed to draw on the kitchen table, provided he cleaned up afterward.

Quino was born in Argentina in 1932, his family made up of Spanish republicans. At the age of twenty, he moved to the metropolis Buenos Aires to take part in the capital’s bustling cultural life. At that time, the South American city was the center of a thriving comics scene, with its own magazines, schools, and traditions, and Quino quickly rose to the top thanks to hard work and talent.

With Quino’s recent death, the Internet has been inundated with homages from institutions, magazines, colleagues, and the millions far and wide that grew up, learned to question, and discovered something of themselves and the world through the Argentine cartoonist’s creations.