Francisco Solano Lopez, L’Eternauta

Francisco Solano Lopez, L’Eternauta. China su cartoncino, cm 37x53.


Francisco Solano López was born in Buenos Aires on the 26th of October in 1928.
He debuts in the comic world in 1953, and thanks to the publishing house “Abril” he gets to know Héctor Oesterheld then it blossoms an artistic partnership with for the Argentinian comic. After working together for series such as “Uma-Uma” and “Bull Rockett” they move to the “Editorial Frontera”. He draws then “Rolo el Marciano adoptivo”, “Amapola Negra”, “Joe Zonda”, “Rul de luna” and of course “L'Eternauta” which gets published in 1957 on “Hora Cero”. He quits his job at the bank against the will of his father.
In the 1960s he moves to Europe and works for the English “Fleetway”. He comes back to Argentina in 1976 and with Oesterheld he starts working again on “L’ Eternauta”. He also draws “Slot Barr” on Ricardo Barreiro’s texts.
The heavy Argentinian political situation, the Desaparecidos, forces him to move to Spain, in Madrid. Because of that, the “L'Eternauta” series remains unfinished. From Spain and Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) after he keeps collaborating with Barreiro and with authors like Carlos Sampayo for whom draws the “Evaristo”’s stories.
After a few years he comes back to Argentina and starts working again on the “L'Eternauta” creating “El Eternauta: El Regreso”. He produces the “Los Internautasper” series for the “Clarìn” making a weekly piece where he combines adventure and virtual reality, a specific aspect required by the magazine.
In October 2008 he gets declared “Personalità Importante Della Cultura" (Outstanding Personality of Culture) by the legislature of the independent city of Buenos Aires.
In 2010, in the occasion of the bi-centenary of the revolution of May, he illustrates Roberto Lorenzo’s story “La Guerra contra el Paraguay”, one of the best among the ones of the anthology “La Patria dibujada” published by the Ministry of Culture of the Presidency of the Argentine Nation.
He dies because of a stroke in Buenos Aires on the 12th of August in 2011.