Conrado Walter Massaguer Diaz

CONRADO WALTER MASSAGUER DÍAZ (Cárdenas, Cuba, 1889- Havana, Cuba, 1965).
"Dice game between F. Roosevelt, W. Churchill, Stalin against Mussolini, Hirohito and Hitler".
Pencil and drypoint on paper.
Signed in the lower right corner.
Measurements: 22 x 30 cm; 32.5 x 42.5 cm (frame).

This is an original pencil and drypoint drawing that humorously captures a dramatic game of dice between World War II leaders. The scene depicts the final victory of the Allies with a double six in favor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Iósif Stalin, against the Axis leaders: Benito Mussolini, Hirohito and Adolf Hitler. This caricature was a great success in the press at the time and was reproduced numerous times in engravings and color lithographs.

Nicknamed "El César de la caricatura", rConrado Walter Massaguer is recognized as Cuba's most important cartoonist and publicist. His influential work is based on genre illustrations and caricatures of famous people (sportsmen, politicians and other personalities), and achieved a wide international diffusion in the United States and Europe. He began his career in 1907 in Cuban magazines such as La Campana and La Arcadia and in El Diario Yucateco. His relevance skyrocketed with publications in prestigious foreign magazines such as the American Life, Cosmopolitan and Vanity Fair, the French Paris-Montparnasse, and the German Die Woche, among others. He was a pioneer in Latin America, co-founder of the Association of Painters and Sculptors and organizer of the first Salon of Humorists. In 1923 he published Guignol, an anthology of 40 caricatures. His influence was consolidated during his stay in New York (1925), where he collaborated with important publications, and was the first Cuban cartoonist to exhibit in the city. His success culminated in an acclaimed exhibition at the Charpentier Gallery in Paris in 1929, where he sold all his works, and his subsequent work as artistic director at the League of Nations in Geneva. He returned to Havana in 1930.