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Mafalda has no one to take care of her today. Julieta Colombo, niece of Joaquín Lavado, Quino, and responsible for the legacy of the Argentine cartoonist, who died in 2020, died this week at the age of 53.

The situation is less convoluted than with the legacy of the writer Jorge Luis Borges, with no known testament to his widow, María Kodama. But a period of uncertainty opens from the death of Julieta Colombo, executor of the work of the creator of the legendary Mafalda.

"She was instrumental in Quino's legacy; and she was also the usufructuary in life of the intellectual rights," Diego Lavado, nephew of the cartoonist, told La Nacion.

"Now we have to see how everything goes. We want it to be in the best way because Quino's work has a lot to give. Of course everything goes on, until we can settle down and we can make a decision between Juliet's nephews and children. We have to be very careful and hope that time will calm the pain in Julieta's family."

Colombo's death was announced on the Mafalda Oficial website: "We say goodbye with deep sadness to Julieta Colombo, who since childhood witnessed the routine work and work of her uncle, Quino. Since 2020, in addition, Julieta was the legal representative of Quino's work and responsible for keeping his cultural legacy alive around the world."

After Quino's death in 2020, Colombo became the main reference of the work of his uncle, with whom he had worked for more than 30 years. A year ago he had signed an agreement with the government of the province of Mendoza, from which Quino was originally from, to digitize the complete work of the cartoonist. It will be baptized as Quino Cultural Space and will become a major tourist attraction in a province known for its wines and ski slopes.

"It is a very great sadness, not only because we were very close friends but because we loved her very much in the family," added Diego Lavado. "It's all been very sudden; we met in Spain for a couple of days, in October of last year, and on the way back we learned that his health was complicated by a previous antecedent. It has been a bucket of cold water, because we were about to see each other in Buenos Aires at any time and we did not coincide on my last trip."

Colombo began in 1983 as an assistant to Alicia Colombo, wife of the cartoonist, and was in charge of preparing the material for the Mafalda strips published in newspapers around the world. Then in 2003, when Quino and his wife went to live in Spain, they offered him to be their agent in Latin America.

Nora Vicario, Minister of Tourism and Culture of Mendoza, lamented Colombo's death in statements to La Nacion: "She was very meticulous and had a very clear idea of Quino's work."

  • art
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