La Muestra Internacional de Humor Gráfico

On December 3rd 1992 the 1st Graphic Humor Exhibition of the University of Alcalá was inaugurated. It was born as an exhibition with an uncertain periodicity, and it marked the beginning of the Graphic Humor Program of the General Foundation of the University of Alcalá.

Now, it is a broad and dynamic program, with different work lines. Some of the most important are:

THE EXHIBITION

The 16th International Exhibition of Graphic Humor will take place on 2009. This year, the topic covered is “The universal basic education”, the second goal of the Millennium Development Goals.

It has been a long road to get to this edition since the beginning on December 1992, when the first Exhibition, titled “Humor and Laws”, with the participation of twenty eight Spanish authors took place. The second edition took place on March 1994, and was devoted to the University of Alcalá. One year before, this University had commemorated the 700th anniversary of the creation of its general studies.

Year by year, the Graphic Humor Exhibition has generated more and more interest, and the number of Works exhibited has increased every year. At the same time, the number of side activities has grown. In 1995, the Exhibition topic was “Humor and Tolerance”; in 1997 “Picaresque: from Quevedo to present days”; in 1998 “The Uncle Sam”; in 1999 “The third Millennium”; in 2000 “Cinema with humor”; in 2001 “Great inventions in Humanity”; in 2002 the topic was free. The title in 2003 was “The laugh is a sport”.

In 2004, coinciding with the year of El Quixote, that was the topic of the exhibition. In 2005, the exhibition was devoted to “Road safety”. In 2006 the topic chosen was the “Gender violence”, and in 2007 it was “Gender equality”. In 2008 the title was “Garbage: The value of what you throw away”.

AWARDS

The Graphic Humor Program arranges the Latin American Graphic Humor Award “Quevedos”, announced by the Foreign Affairs and Education, Culture and Sports ministries of the Spanish government. This is the award provided with the greatest amount of money of all the international humor awards. It is announced every two years, and has been granted to Antonio Mingote (1998), Quino (2000) y Chumy Chúmez (2002), Andrés Rábago, El Roto (2004), Eduardo Ferro (2006) y Ziraldo (2008)

Other award announced is the “Quevedos-dos” in collaboration with the Alcalá Town Hall, devoted to school students in the Community of Madrid. The edition of 2009 is the 8th, since it was born.

PUBLICATIONS

The Graphic Humor Program publishes the following publications:

The Magazine of Information of Graphic Humor Quevedos: There have been published 30 issues of this magazine.

The Collection of Latin American Authors: There have been published three monographic issues, devoted to Nani, Banegas y Ángel Rueda.

The History of Latin American Graphic Humor: There have been published 12 of the 17 volumes expected to be published in collaboration with Editorial Milenio. They are devoted to Spain, Mexico, Portugal, Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, Ecuador, Paraguay, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica and Chile.

TRAINING AND RESEARCH

The Graphic Humor Program of the General Foundation of the University of Alcalá organizes and promotes different researches and meetings dealing with the Graphic Humor. In the last five years (from 2004 to 2009) there have been several meetings of the program “Humor Aula”, where different experts from different disciplines discuss about Humor.

The program also organizes different training activities. One of the most important is the Summer Course Graphic Humor and News.