Monday 22 November 2010

Horacio Altuna!


I was just sort of stumbling around some tumblr sites the other night, looking at erotic cartoons and things of that nature, when I suddenly chanced upon a few colour drawings that really took my breath away, striking me as exceptional and with no small amount of depth (for erotic cartoons). This handful of uncredited pictures appealed greatly to my own tastes, and I figured it was worthy of sharing here for those with a similar bent.


The artist is Horacio Altuna, an Argentine who has been drawing comics professionally since 1965. He has not always done erotic work [see gallery links on right], and is perhaps most famous in his home country for El loco Chavez, a series about a detective. Altuna has lived in Spain since 1982 and has continued to publish well-regarded work into the 21st century, including a family series started in 2005 called Familia tipo.


What is it about these pictures that fascinates me so? The detail is probably what strikes a viewer first; Altuna's unusual attention to objects and backgrounds, let alone to figures, makes these scenes that much more believable. But look again - notice the surreptitious nature of the sexual activity going on, the way other people are either watching or close enough to see or hear, the dynamic of the situations, the management of space, the private and the public. There is so little skin on display, yet the filthiness is impossible to miss.


Was innuendo ever so simultaneously vulgar and pretty?