Tributes to Hugo Pratt, 30 years after his death

Four exhibitions will present the Italian cartoonist and writer Hugo Pratt through documents and reproductions of his famous illustrations in Rome. The exhibitions will take place at the Istituto Geografico of Villa Celimontana, as part of the Travel Literature Festival, at the National Library, at the Museo delle Civilt… all'EUR, and at the Farnesina.

The first edition of the award named after the great artist will be held in October, open to comic book schools across Europe.

These are the first initiatives in the calendar of tributes to the master of illustrated literature, who died 30 years ago on August 20, which inaugurates the events leading up to the centenary of his birth, on June 15, 2027.

During this "prattian triennium", exhibitions are planned in several European countries , as well as study seminars, publications, documentaries and even a television series about Corto Maltese, his most famous character.

Pratt was remembered in recent days at the Villars Palace Hotel in Villars-sur-Ollon, in the Swiss canton of Vaud, where his magnificent library, comprising more than 20,000 volumes, has been housed since 2022 .

"Hugo is always here with us because all his beloved books, which inspired all his works, are here," was emphasized at the gathering, which brought together lifelong friends, editors, biographers, writers, journalists, and literary critics in a sort of opening ceremony for the celebrations.

The books that once resided in the Grandvaux house where the illustrator lived (and where he has been buried in the small cemetery since 1995) are now on display in seven conference rooms throughout the hotel complex. Here, in the long hallway, a permanent exhibition about Pratt and his work has been installed, specially created by Cong, the company that manages the entire artistic heritage of the father of Corto Maltese.

Patrizia Zanotti, a longtime Pratt collaborator and currently the managing director of Cong, spoke with Didier Platteau, Casterman's editor, who was the first in France to publish A Ballad of the Salt Sea in 1967, the first story of Pratt's hero.

"For me, The Ballad was the origin of three great revolutionary moments ," he said: "the first for Hugo, who discovered his audience; the second for the graphic novel, which found its way; and the third for the publisher Casterman, who was given a new identity by Pratt."

Dominique Petitfaux, author of the beautiful biography of the master, The Desire to Be Useless , recalled how his life somehow resembles his works . Next up were Thierry Thomas, winner of the Prix Goncourt for his biography of Pratt, "Life is a Sign"; Cristina Taverna, gallery owner, editor, and friend of the artist; Simon Casterman, from the historic Belgian publishing family; Francesco Boille, film and comics critic; Fabrizio Paladini, journalist, writer, and collaborator of Cong; and Marco Steiner, writer, regular collaborator of the artist, and author of numerous books about his world.

"Pratt," he said, "is above all a door-opener , and this group of friends sharing his story today is like one of his tribes gathered around the fire to hear the stories of Tusitala, the name the Samoan indigenous people gave to Robert Louis Stevenson, one of Pratt's inspirational fathers."

Michel Pierre, an expert on colonial history and author of numerous books on Pratt, concluded with an anecdote: "When I was about to send the book Memoirs to the printer, I noticed that in a photo of a Venetian street there appeared the shadow of a sailor half-hidden in the fog, identical to his Corto. I pointed this out to Pratt and, from then on, I became for him the Breton shaman capable of drawing the ghost of Corto Maltese from a photo. Thus our friendship was born."

An immersion in the world of the creator of Corto Maltese will be possible until October 19 at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena with the major exhibition "Hugo Pratt, Imaginary Geographies", the most important monographic exhibition ever held in Italy, which presents 300 works including drawings, sculptures, videos, digital sets and unpublished materials such as sketches, drafts and personal documents, alongside some thirty objects from Oceania that the artist drew in the cartoons, "fishing" them out of the history and ethnology volumes in his library.