Chilean artist illustrator and storyteller of Disney’s Donald Duck dies

Sunday, January 8th 2012 - 05:12 UTC

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Chilean artist and storyteller Victor Arriagada died last week following a long struggle with leukaemia. He leaves behind a legacy of characters, stories and artwork which will continue to thrill readers for decades to come.

Vicar was arguably most famous for his illustrations of the Disney creation Donald Duck, a character that he drew professionally for over 30 years. In Chile he is also known for the comic series “Guaso Ramon,” which conveyed a humorous reflection on the central grasslands of rural Chile.

He started his artistic career in the 1950s, drawing for “Mampoto,” the children’s supplement for the Chile’s most established newspaper, El Mercurio. In 1960 Vicar moved to Barcelona, where for 10 years he worked for several comic magazines throughout Europe.

In 1970, Vicar was approached to illustrate Donald Duck for the Danish Publisher Gutenberghus (now Egmont), marking the dawn of a relationship which would last until the end of his life.

The famous Disney icon soon became the principal focus of Vicar’s attentions. As a friend of his once said, “drawing Donald was his most important project ... The duck became his life.” His talent for illustrating the character and its cartoon colleagues was unsurpassed. Carl Barks, Donald’s creator, described Vicar as one of the great Disney artists of his generation, surpassing even Barks’ own artistic abilities.

Anna Maria Vind, director of the Egmont Creative Center where Vicar worked, said of her former colleague: “Vicar’s strength was that he could make you believe you actually were in Duckburg from the very first picture of a story … A master storyteller and a master artist!”

In Chile, Vicar is known for creating the popular cartoon series “Guaso Ramon,” published in El Pingüino (The Penguin) magazine and Chilean daily La Tercera. Depicting the life of an archetypal Chilean cowboy, “Guaso Ramon” chronicled Vicar’s nostalgia for rural Chile. Its protagonist, always dressed in traditional cowboy garb, partakes in a rustic lifestyle of riding horses, and storytelling around camp fires, bearing little resemblance to the modern Chile of today.

Toward the end of his life Vicar continued to illustrate for publishers worldwide, employing several artists in a Santiago-based studio.

Much of his life’s work was celebrated in a 2011 exhibition at the Corporación Cultural Las Condes. “It was like an injection of life for him, he continued drawing to the end, always lucid” said his brother Fernando Arriagada, adding, “We are upset, but at least now we know he is resting.”

Vicar was buried last Wednesday at a funeral in Parque del Recuerdo, Santiago.

Donald Duck and Guaso Ramo among other comic series made Victor Arriagada a world known artist