Joaquín Xaudaró

Who was Joaquín Xaudaró?

Joaquín Xaudaró y Echau was a Spanish cartoonist, illustrator, and caricaturist. His humorous depictions of the new technologies of his time –he published a volume of cartoons called The Perils of Flight- serve as an important link between the worlds of nineteenth-century illustration and twentieth-century cartooning. Xaudaró's observations on contemporary culture and technology, as well as his gentle but insightful sense of humor, are apparent in such cartoons as "El telégrafo sin hilos," "Un retrato futurista," "El auto que pasa," "Despertar en Biarritz," "El leopardo inglés en Spyon-Kop."

Born in Vigan in the Philippines, Xaudaró's family, of Aragonese origin, settled in Barcelona in 1883. Xaudaró was educated in Paris and London. He began his career drawing for Madrid Cómico, La Saeta, Gedeón, and Barcelona Cómica, a Barcelona-based humor magazine of the 1890s, occasionally utilizing the pseudonym J. O'Raduax. Between 1907 and 1914, he also drew for the Paris-based periodical Le Rire.

Xaudaró subsequently worked for the Madrid-based periodicals Blanco y Negro and ABC. His daily vignettes for ABC brought him fame, with each one containing a trademark little dog that soon became known as "el perrito de Xaudaró."