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April 3,2005 -Apr.10,2005 |
Hugo Pratt's wondrous world of artistic comics
Siena exhibit presents a voyage to the real and the imagined, included a racing car decorated by the artist
Until August 28, Siena's Palazzo Squarcialupi - also known as the museum complex of Santa Maria della Scala - offers its visitors an unforgettable tour of the world via the fantastic genius of Hugo Pratt. The suggestive exhibition, titled Periplo immaginario (Imaginary circumnavigation), is the first devoted to this artist, who passed away 10 years ago. It traces Pratt's works on the theme of voyages, both real and imagined, from Venice to the Celtic world, Africa, Latin America, North America, the Pacific Ocean and Asia.
The places of Pratt's life merge with those of his literary sources, taken from children's books (by Stevenson, Conrad and London) that inspired his multifaceted comic books as well as his pictorial universe of watercolours, temperas and ink drawings.
Pratt managed to immerse himself, with acute anthropological sensitivity, in the most diverse realities. This voyage, an imaginary circumnavigation of real and intangible places, leads the visitor through 350 works, selected especially for the Siena exhibition and divided into seven geographic areas: south-west, north-west, Africa, Latin America, North America, Pacific Ocean and Asia, linked with original video clips.
The exhibition retraces the steps of Pratt's artistic evolution from his debut, Asso di Picche (1945), to his Wheeling watercolours painted shortly before his death. The world of American Indians and the Wild West came alive in the unforgettable tableaux of Ticonderoga. Africa revelled itself, in Gli scorpioni del deserto, in the boundless immobility of its spaces and in the vivacious colours of uniforms that Pratt had known in the years spent in Addis Ababa with his father. Anna nella jungla, Sgt Kirk, Cato Zulu and Jesuit Joe are unforgettable portraits, inspired by classic adventure books of English literature.
The exhibition displays, for the first time, the 163 tableaux of Una ballata del mare salato (Pratt's first long comic book and the first appearance of Corto Maltese, his most famous character). It includes the first commented catalogue on Pratt's work (curated by Thierry Thomas and Pratt's main collaborator Patrizia Zanotti, published by Lizard, Rome), in three languages and with over 500 watercolours, a must for lovers of artistic comic books.
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