This weekend, the city of Barcelona hosted the 41st edition of the International Comic Fair, an important event for lovers of comics and graphic novels.

The goal, in addition to serving to present new developments in the sector, host author signatures, expand knowledge or enjoy various activities for all audiences, has been consolidated as a space for recognition through the delivery of several awards. Among them, the Barcelona Comic Grand Prize, which is given in recognition of the professional career of a Spanish comic author with a minimum of 25 years of published work.

This year, the artist awarded the Grand Prize was Trini Tinturé, born in Lleida in 1935, who has recently joined the Morera collection. Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Lleida with one of its best-known series, “Emma es charming” (1989).

Comics in feminine

Trinidad Tinturé Navarro, known artistically as Trini Tinturé, is one of the most important figures in European comics who, between the 1950s and 1980s, created a style especially for the female audience and in which internationally known characters such as « Oh Tinker! (published in the Spanish State as ‘The Violet Fairy’) or Curly, among others.

Self-taught, at the age of 17 she was awarded the medal in artistic drawing from the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Lleida, and two years later she left for Barcelona, where she quickly began working for small publishers, drawing what they then called ‘ fairy booklets’. In 1960 he joined the Bruguera publishing house where he drew for the Celia and Sissi series, from where he made the leap abroad, and began publishing the comics of Biggi, Jurtz, JampShop, Tina and Twinkle in countries such as Germany, Austria and the United Kingdom.

In the 1980s, together with screenwriters Andreu Martín and Francisco Pérez Navarro, he created his most popular series: “Emma es charming”, for Lily magazine (Bruguera publishing house). Tinturé drew her character until the closure of this publishing house in 1983. Later, Glenat Ediciones would partially reissue it in two volumes, in 2006 and 2008.

After the end of Bruguera, the illustrator continued working in Germany with the publishing house Bastei and in the Netherlands in the magazine Tina y Penny.

A long artistic career that has taken her to several countries and has made her, along with Purita Campos, one of the creators of this style of drawing that accompanied an entire generation.