“I am a drawing animal,” he says by way of introduction. “An animal of thinking about my life with the justification of expressing and publishing. A graphic humorist who tends toward the grotesque and the expressionist,” he continues. Miguel Repiso from his home in Pinamar, where he is spending a few days.
rep, as he is known professionally, is curious, passionate, multifaceted. At 14 he published his first drawing and didn’t stop. Strips, cartoons, comics, murals, books, CD covers, wine labels, collaborations with foreign media, radio programs (13 years of “The Hologram and the Anchovy”), television shows (three cycles of “Mundo Rep”) shows live, everything is encouraged. He has around 40 of his own books published (he does not remember exactly), numerous illustrations in books by other authors, a version of “Don Quixote” and another of the “Divine Comedy”, a biography of Evita and another of Maradona, to name only some of his extensive production.
His latest book is “Messi, born extraterrestrial”. “Messi is a weird one. Not only because of his abilities, his career, his triumphs, but because he did not participate in the Argentine soccer system. He was not in all the quilombets of the clubs, of the brave bands, of the AFA. He went to Barcelona very young. That transforms him into an untouched Argentine. He is an extraterrestrial because the football he has done in the last 25 years is indescribable,” he maintains.
For 38 years, he has published his daily strip on Página 12. Spain’s El País is now publishing a series of 8 audiovisual episodes called “Ay Futuro”, where Martin Caparros talks about the future while a camera films Rep’s hand drawing. Added to that are his shows with Pedro Saborido, one speaks, the other draws.
He is a Knight of Arts and Sciences of France and a Unicef Goodwill Ambassador, among other recognitions.
In March he will present his Messi book in Madrid and then he will participate in a meeting of press cartoonists in Lyon, France.
News: What characteristics define it?
Rep: I am very hardworking, very willful, ambitious, neurotic and that somehow cures something that is very hidden in me and that is that I am trustworthy. I could lie there, be contemplative, read a lot, look at images, movies. In fact, I was just drawing the Tomorrow Page strip and got distracted by a documentary about Lucino Visconti. I’m like a capricious child with adult ambitions. For example, six months ago Messi’s book did not exist, it only had a couple of sketches, and the delivery date was approaching. I said: “Who is going to come do it?” And Miguel came and he did it, I don’t know what he was like. They are very neurotic hours, because they involve a lot of research, obsession, drawing drawings, it doesn’t work out, I give up on outings, on moments in life. However, someone comes, which is me, and saves me.
News: Why are you a cartoonist?
Rep: Because I liked comic books as a child. There were no books at home. Once, I was eight years old, I was in Corrientes, locked in a room suspected of having mumps, and I found a book. That was the first one I read and the one I always return to, “Hamlet.” It had on the cover like a Viking, something heroic, quite similar to the comics I read. I liked the grotesque comics, “Patoruzú”, “Hijitus”, “Don Nicola”, “Little Lulú”, “The Crazy Bird”, and those of superheroes also fell into my hands. I never doubted that I wanted to be a cartoonist.
News: And were you already drawing at that time?
Rep: Yes, all children draw. I loved zines, the smell of ink, and I actually wanted to make zines and be my own editor. At 14 years old I published my first drawing in Fabio Zerpa’s Cuarta Dimension magazine. I never had vocation problems, and I had no mandates, they left me very free, I didn’t even finish high school, and I published, I published. Later I was lucky enough to be employed in a publishing house to do layout; Then I was at the exact moment when some drawings had to be presented; Then Cascioli called me for Humor, and that’s how I published until today. I still have the passion for drawing and publishing intact and I renew it by doing new things.
News: In ’93, Quino said that you were the most original of the Argentine cartoonists of recent times.
Rep: I think he said it because I didn’t have a classical training and I didn’t follow a school. But I know very well how to recognize styles and, in some way, I brought drama, narrative dramaturgy to humor. I not only make comic strips but also dramatic strips with grotesque drawings. Quino noticed that freedom of drawing that I have. I’m autodidactic.
News: What nourishes you artistically?
Rep: What has fed me the least for a couple of decades is comics and humor. I don’t look at other people’s production. It is a matter that I already settled. Everything else generates a lot for me, the history of art, cinema, theater, literature and essays. Since I lack logic, I am looking for order in humanistic, philosophical and artistic essays. As for music, The Beatles are the basis of my life. Then I like jazz, beep boop, avant-garde and experimental, but with a melody behind it. And chamamé is my childhood, my parents from Corrientes, you can’t get rid of it.
News: Its production is extensive and very diverse. Do you like challenges, do you get bored easily?
Rep: I never ate the film of the artist on the board, with the ink, the paper and the visor because it made me explode with other types of aesthetic appetites. For example, Picasso, The Beatles or Alberto Brescia and José Muñoz, within my field. The search in other genres to bring to my hand what suits me. I learn much more by reading Kerouac than by rewatching Tía Vicenta’s collection. I read John Berger and it gives me the energy to work for a year. It awakens ambitions in me. And I am lucky to be able to learn and rehearse in public because I have been publishing for a long time and I have the freedom to do what I sing. There are things I did that I really liked and others, not so much.. For example, I loved “Don Quixote”, they have even taken me as a cartoonist from the Don Quixote cartoonist dynasty and I have traveled for that. On the other hand, I didn’t find the tone for “The Divine Comedy.” There are also mistakes in blockbuster production.
News: For 38 years he has been drawing the Página 12 strip. How do he produce every day?
Rep: It doesn’t cost me anything, and I also draw the summer stories from the newspaper. Now I’m in Pinamar, I’m going to walk on the beach, I come back and I know I’m going to do the strip tomorrow. I’m going to get a quality of 7 to 10, never less than that. It has to do with what happens around me and a lot to do with my interior. And I am very documented because I know that one day I will need it. In some jobs I have to draw a lot to find a synthesis.
News: Why are you against the image era?
Rep: Because there is an overproduction of images that do not shake, do not mobilize, but anesthetize people. Today it is very easy to produce images that don’t say a thing. On Instagram, a fish made by your neighbor’s mother-in-law coexists with a Matisse. The eye becomes anesthetized. The light behind the devices democratizes for the worse, because it gives equal value to a painting by Van Eyck as to the photo of the restaurant. It’s pathetic, everything goes the same. The only antidote is to study art history, to educate our eyes to be able to choose.
News: What is your family environment like?
Rep: I live with my wife, Berenice, who is an advertising producer and also helps me a lot.
News: Children?
Rep: I don’t have it, I’m going to have it. Berenice is pregnant and will be born in July. I’m going to be a father at 63.
News: How are you living it?
Rep: My great obsession is displacing me, which is work. Little by little it is getting involved, but I still don’t know what to tell you, because it is pure project, even though it is there. Is rare. I haven’t even thought about my characters as much as I’m going to have to think about this son. I haven’t made it meat yet.
News: How do you see this new stage of the country?
Rep: I see everything black, very bad. I see enormous uncertainty, a great local and global threat. Being an artist saves you because you see light in art and culture, but global pessimism, from people close to you and from oneself, taints a lot of this moment. I am at a very critical moment in my life. On the one hand, a light appears, a promise and, on the other, there is this social trap. At a global level, war, neoliberalism, artificial intelligence, robotization. As allies we always have culture, art and emotional proximity. They are fundamental in the adventure of human life. You can’t expect much from the political systems, from the powers, from how the media crushes and vulgarizes people and how people allow themselves to be vulgarized. It is becoming an increasingly enslaved society. This ends up in a place that is not desired by humanism.
