Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez dies in Mexico

"Gabriel Garcia Marquez has died," tweeted a spokeswoman of his family, Fernanda Familiar. He was admitted in a hospital in in Mexico City on April 3 with pneumonia.

"Death of Gabriel García Márquez. Mercedes [wife of Marquez] and his sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo, allow me to give information. That sadness so deep .." she tweeted.

"April 17 marks the lives of many but the death of Gabriel García Márquez. There is a deep hole. Life lived absence felt," she posted.

"On Monday 21 April, is a tribute to Gabriel García Márquez, in Fine Arts, at 16:00. Until then ... with yellow roses," said the spokeswoman.

Colombian president Juan Manuel Santos tweeted: "Eternal glory to more glory who has given us. Thanks Gabo!"

"The Giants never die," he said adding "a thousand years of loneliness and sadness at the death of the greatest Colombian of all time! Sympathy and condolences to the family and Gaba."

Considered a maestro of magic realism, Gabriel García Márquez was born in 1928 in the small town of Aracataca, situated in a tropical region of northern Colombia, between the mountains and the Caribbean Sea.

According to the Nobel Prize website's biography of the writer, Marquez grew up with his maternal grandparent - his grandfather was a pensioned colonel from the civil war at the beginning of the century.

He went to a Jesuit college and began to read law, but his studies were soon broken off for his work as a journalist. In 1954 he was sent to Rome  on an assignment for his newspaper, and since then he has mostly lived abroad - in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Mexico - in a more or less compulsory exile. Besides his large output of fiction he has written screenplays and has continued to work as a journalist, according to the site.

He was fondly called Gabo across Latin America. Considered one of the most significant authors of the 20th century, he was awarded the 1972 Neustadt International Prize for Literature and the 1982 Nobel Prize in Literature.

In 1958, he married Mercedes Barcha; they had two sons, Rodrigo and Gonzalo.

His best known novels are One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and Love in the Time of Cholera (1985).

While he blended magical elements with real situations, some of his works are set in a fictional village called Macondo (the town mainly inspired by his birthplace Aracataca), and most of them explore the theme of solitude.

Condolences meanwhile are pouring in.

American President Barack Obama condoled: "The world has lost one of its greatest visionary writers -- and one of my favorites from the time I was young. Affectionately known as 'Gabo' to millions of his fans, he first won international recognition with his masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude. I once had the privilege to meet him in Mexico, where he presented me with an inscribed copy that I cherish to this day. ... I offer my thoughts to his family and friends, whom I hope take solace in the fact that Gabo's work will live on for ..

Images Credit: Creative Commons/Wikimedia Commons