'O Crime do Restaurante Chinês'.
Ionaldo Cavalcanti, also known as Ilo, was a Brazilian painter, graphic artist and comic scholar. At the start of his career, he drew several "true crime" comics under the title 'Crimes que Abalaram São Paulo' ("Crimes that shook São Paulo"). Cavalcanti was also notable as an author on various topics, including comics. Two of his books, 'O Mundo dos Quadrinhos' ("The World of Comics", 1977) and 'Esses Incríveis Heróis de Papel' ("Our Amazing Paper Heroes", 1988), have become standard works about comics in the Portuguese language.
Early life and career
Ionaldo de Andrade Cavalcanti was born in either 1933 or 1935 in the city of Recife, capital of the state of Pernambuco. In the late 1940s, Cavalcanti began his activities in the Recife art scene, participating in the city's third Modern Art Salon (1948), which marked the beginning of the Modern Art Society of Recife. In 1952, he additionally co-launched the Atelier Coletivo, an atelier shared by ten to fifteen artists. Around this time, Cavalcanti began to divide his time between painting and doing advertising artwork. His paintings mainly dealt with Brazilian folklore and the Candomblé religion, and have been exhibited in several solo and group expositions, including the São Paulo Art Biennial of 1967. In 1971, Cavalcanti painted murals for the São Paulo Hilton Hotel.
Crimes que Abalaram São Paulo
In 1959, Ionaldo Cavalcanti moved to the capital, São Paulo, where he started working for Samuel Wainer's tabloid newspaper Última Hora. In collaboration with the journalist M.A. Camacho, he made a series of comic strips based on true crime stories, published in this newspaper in 1960-1961. Under the title 'Crimes que Abalaram São Paulo' ("Crimes that shook São Paulo"), three stories were serialized: 'O Crime da Paralítica Teresa Rank', 'O Crime da Mala' and 'O Crime do Restaurante Chinês'. The artist signed the strips with "Ilo". In the period 1962-1964, more crime story adaptations were drawn for the same paper by Zé Geraldo. Ionaldo Cavalcanti's association with Última Hora ended in 1964, when the paper was closed down by the new military regime. From 1962 to 1974, the artist was employed by the publisher Editora Abril as art director for technical and educational magazines. From 1974 to 1985, he subsequently worked as a freelancer, and then from 1985 to 1996 joined the cultural tabloid newspaper DO Leitura. Cavalcanti additionally worked as a teacher at the Galeria de Arte of São Paulo.
To the left, the book cover of 'O Mundo Dos Quadrinhos'. Among the characters posing to have their photograph taken by Popeye (E.C. Segar) are from left to right: The Spirit (Will Eisner), Superman (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster), Prince Valiant (Harold Foster), The Sub-Mariner (Bill Everett), The Phantom and Mandrake the Magician (Lee Falk), Flash Gordon (Alex Raymond), Bathless Groggins (Al Capp and Raeburn Van Buren), Jiggs (George McManus), Alley Oop (V.T. Hamlin), The Lone Ranger (Charles Flanders), Captain America (Jack Kirby and Joe Simon), Top Cat (Hanna-Barbera), The Blue Beetle's sidekick Sparky (Charles Nicholas), Robin (Bob Kane), Mônica (Mauricio de Sousa), Snoopy (Charles M. Schulz), Henry (Carl Anderson), Mafalda (Quino) and Astérix (René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo).To the right, the book cover of 'Esses Incríveis Heróis de Papel'.
Books
Apart from his own activities as an artist, Cavalcanti was also a scholar on popular music and comics. He wrote two books about comics theory: 'O Mundo dos Quadrinhos' ("The World of Comics", 1977) and 'Esses Incríveis Heróis de Papel' ("Our Amazing Paper Heroes", 1988). The latter won the HQ Mix Trophy for "Best Theoretical Book" in 1989. In 1994, he began to compile an overview of songs by Brazilian composers of popular music throughout the ages, from classic samba legends like Lupicínio Rodrigues and Cartola to more contemporary artists like Carlinhos Brown and Antônio Cícero. In the end, his database contained about 5,000 composers and 17,000 songs. He donated his collection of about 6,000 comic books to the Pernambuco Cultural Secretariat.
Recognition
In 2002, Ionaldo Cavalcanti won the Prêmio Angelo Agostini for "Master of National Comics".
Death
Ionaldo Cavalcanti passed away in São Paulo on 6 May 2002.
'O Crime da Paralitica Teresa Rank'.