In the labyrinth of Giuseppe Palumbo
For 40 years I have been drawing and publishing comics. Not a day goes by without at least one moment of my day being dedicated to some project in existence or in the making. Nothing dies sine linea. For all these years, but perhaps even before, I wander in this maze of stories, ideas, texts and images, as if I were also in Wonderland. A maze can be a dark and tragic place, but I don’t care. Inside those meanders, only there, I feel at ease. And for decades now, between one wall and the other of the labyrinth, there is a couple of friends who keep me company: they are thieves and murderers, yet I can’t blame them. Diabolik and Eva Kant.
From the successful series dedicated to him, which I have been collaborating on for more than twenty years, this exhibition begins. Those who want to enter the maze, will find here a selection of covers drawn in china and their studies pencil, original boards and tables from the alternative series DK; you will then find drawings and stories made for the magazine Linus (in which I pay tribute to a great artist who loved Diabolik, Dino Buzzati) and great pictorial images for a special event very recent.
As you go forward, then, you dig into my past. Emerald green and blood red, emerges Ramarro, the first masochistic superhero, born on the pages of Frigidaire and then, in his Seconda pelle (written by Daniele Brolli), migrated to Cyborg, the first cyberpunk comic book: to be enjoyed raw in grand guignol sauce. It was my most extreme and free toy box.
Having turned the corner, overcome the madness of the eighties and the disillusionment of the nineties, told by the two skins of Ramarro, we arrive at the year 2000, the "after Genoa" and the "after 11 September", with the research collective that I helped to found: Action30. And in investigating what new forms of racism and fascism were about to arise and characterize our present, we used the thinking and actions of some reference figures. Here we put on stage with Bazar Elettrico (written by Pierangelo Di Vittorio and Alessandro Manna), revealing the work table, the toolbox of thinkers like Georges Bataille, Walter Benjamin and Aby Warburg. It is the turn of Pier Paolo Pasolini, whom we remembered and studied and projected in our present in Pasolini 1964 (with Maurizio Camerini and Alessandro Manna and others): that film shot in Matera, my city, in 1964, the year of my birth, It is still today, after sixty years, a film that speaks to us, very current.
The updating of memory archives continues on another side. Born within the project Lucania Comics & Games, first attempt of a Comics & Games Commission (on the basis of the regional film commissions), promoted by APT Basilicata and published by Oblomov, La sola cura è la biografia del medico e sinologo Ludovico Nicola di Giura, Between the end of the nineteenth century and the post-war period, until his death in 1947. Through the extraordinary life of this lucan who became the attending physician of the last Chinese emperors and who, through his writings and translations, passed on to us a world that was disappearing, I have tried to trace the decisive sense of transmitting knowledge and of confronting other civilizations.
We arrive, with this book and the Texone, today. On this special adventure of Tex, many words, especially on line, have been spent. On the occasion of this entry into my personal labyrinth, I can only add that facing the task of 224 pages in A3 format, drawn over a period of some years, It was a gesture of gratitude to Sergio Bonelli that gave me confidence when I wanted to become a true professional. The West, the Tex I designed are MY West and MY Tex and I’m sure that Sergio would have wanted nothing else.
We’re at the exit, the Minotaur is behind, asleep. Here we find a selection of covers and illustrations among the numerous that I have been making for various publishers. In particular, my Bologna, city of adoption, in the covers Einaudi for Loriano Macchiavelli; here, on display for the first time, the originals of the illustrated edition for Mondadori Oscar INK of Aldous Huxley’s Il Mondo Nuovo: I entrust the closure to these images that together hold science fiction (from which I started), memory archives (to which I arrived with Action30 and The only cure) and the Hopi Indians (which you will find in Electric Bazaar/Warburg and in Tex). Here is the thread of Ariadne. Goodbye.
Giuseppe Palumbo
In Programma
Thu 03 Oct 10:00 - 20:00
Nel labirinto di Giuseppe Palumbo
Mostra che ripercorre le tappe fondamentali della carriera di Giuseppe Palumbo, Romics d'Oro 2024.
Dove ?
PAD.8 - MOSTRE
Fri 04 Oct 10:00 - 20:00
Nel labirinto di Giuseppe Palumbo
Mostra che ripercorre le tappe fondamentali della carriera di Giuseppe Palumbo, Romics d'Oro 2024.
Dove ?
PAD.8 - MOSTRE
Sat 05 Oct 10:00 - 20:00
Nel labirinto di Giuseppe Palumbo
Mostra che ripercorre le tappe fondamentali della carriera di Giuseppe Palumbo, Romics d'Oro 2024.
Dove ?
PAD.8 - MOSTRE
Sun 06 Oct 10:00 - 20:00
Nel labirinto di Giuseppe Palumbo
Mostra che ripercorre le tappe fondamentali della carriera di Giuseppe Palumbo, Romics d'Oro 2024.