Fornaro was born in Calcutta to "Swiss-Italian" parents. He was raised in Italy and Switzerland, then studied architecture in Zurich and painting at the Royal Academy of Munich.[6][2] He came to the US as a young man and began his career as a newspaper caricaturist, first in Chicago for the Times-Herald, then in New York for the Herald, Morning Telegraph, World, and Evening Sun.[6]
In 1906, he traveled to Mexico with his friend Benjamin De Casseres.[6] They became involved in radical politics, and joined the opposition to Mexico's president Porfirio Díaz.[5] They joined the staff of the newly-formed newspaper El Diario, which opposed Díaz, with de Fornaro becoming the artistic director of its Sunday edition, El Diario Illustrado.[7] He returned to New York in 1909, and published his Diaz, Czar of Mexico: an arraignment, which led to a trial for criminal libel against a nonresident by the editor of the Mexican newspaper El Imparcial.[8][9] He was convicted and sentenced to one year in the Blackwell's Island Prison (now Roosevelt Island), where he served 8 months, and upon his release, was fêted by the Vagabonds lunch group of the National Arts Club.[10] He was also invited to a dinner at Joel's Bohemia on October 4, 1910,[10] and in that year drew caricatures for that restaurant's celebrity wall.[11]
^Peter Hulme, "Joel’s Revolutionary Table: New York and Mexico City in Turbulent Times", Comparative American Studies An International Journal15:3-4:117-145 (2017) doi:10.1080/14775700.2017.1551600
