Ricardo Summers Ysern, known by the pseudonym of Serny, (Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz, May 6, 1908 - Madrid, November 12, 1995) was a Spanish painter and illustrator. Biography
His family moved to Madrid when he was nine years old. Son of a judge, he went to a lawyer (he studied law, a career he financed himself), but since he was a child, he was very clear about his artistic vocation. Self-taught, he published his first drawing in 1922, with only 14 years in the magazine Buen Humor, that directed Sileno. Later it began to collaborate with numerous publications like the Sphere, La Risa, Chiquilín and New World, but reached notoriety from his drawings in Black and White and its infantile supplement People Menuda, where it gave life to very popular personages of the time like Celia , created by Elena Fortún, or Cuchifritín, who was commissioned in 1935 by the Aguilar publishing house.His work for the publisher of the newspaper Abc was long overdue: he was 18 years old when he published his first cover for his supplement Blanco and Negro, on June 20, 1926; the last one he made for Abc was the commemorative of the 25,000th issue of the newspaper, on November 12, 1985. In those almost 60 years of collaboration, it coincided with artists of the stature of Rafael de Penagos, Xaudar, Sancha, Sáenz de Tejada, Sileno, Carlos Tauler, Mingote and even his nephew Manuel Summers, whom he adored and who died before him. In the National of 1932 obtained a third medal. At the end of the 50 Spanish Press commissioned to him to Serny a great mural painting of more than a hundred square meters to decorate the vestibule of its soothes in the street Serrano of Madrid and although during a time some fragments were conserved in the commercial center that occupies at the moment the building, today there is nothing left of the mural. Serny collaborated with other publications such as Cosmopolis, La Estafeta Literaria, La Codorniz and Mundo Hispánico. Between 1947 and 1952 he was artistic director of the children's magazine Bazar, edited by the female section of the FET and the JONS. Also it was in charge of illustrate the printed works of Jose Maria Pemán. The stylization of the figures is the predominant feature of his painting.
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