An exhibition dedicated to a master of Italian comics: Attilio Micheluzzi from Umag, Istria. From September 25 to November 7 at the Civic Museum of Istrian, Rijeka, Dalmatian Civilization in via Torino in Trieste.

As long as comic strip stories were properly defined as such, and not yet “graphic novels”, there were in Italy no more than half a dozen undisputed Masters of Comics (and above all of black and white comics, the most iconic): Hugo Pratt, Guido Crepax, Dino Battaglia, Sergio Toppi, Guido Buzzelli, but also Attilio Micheluzzi, although his enormous production published in albums and/or volumes was included and compressed into a very limited period of time, the 18 years between 1972 (the year of the first story published in the “Corriere dei Ragazzi”) and 1990 (the year of his premature death).

Micheluzzi was born in Istria, in Umago, in 1930: son of Anita Zacchigna and another Attilio, a native of Fiume, later a division general in the Italian Royal Air Force, he would have nurtured his father's passion for flight and airplanes, following him to the various cities where he was based (including Trieste and Gorizia), but always nourishing - by his own admission - a certain nostalgia for the world of Central Europe, for the culture and lifestyle of an era "still tied by the navel to the glorious 800th century".

Since he was a child, Attilio junior showed an innate talent for drawing, which led him to create illustrated stories very early, obviously unpublished. Adventure, the war events of the first and then the second world war, the attraction for everything concerning flight (and air battles) will characterize much of his more mature work as an illustrator, even after graduating in architecture in Naples. He will then live various professional experiences in African countries: Senegal, Nigeria, Morocco, Tunisia, ending up being expelled with his family from Libya at the advent of the Gaddafi regime.

He then settled in Naples with his wife and children and, from the Seventies, he devoted himself exclusively to the invention of extraordinary “novels” in images, often with exotic settings, inventing characters of great charm such as the reporter Johnny Focus, the adventurer Marcel Labrume, the noble and bold Petra chérie, protagonist of events sometimes inserted in the physical and historical context of the Adriatic, the Balkans, Turkey. And again, intensively, other protagonists: Captain Erik, Rosso Stenton, Clarence “Babel” Man… A very dense bibliography, which also includes stories not devolved to specialized magazines, but intended for publication in monothematic volumes (“Siberia”, “Titanic”, “Mermoz”, “Bab El Mandeb”, “Afghanistan”), all characterized by a precise, meticulous knowledge of the places, of the History and of the historical events. Death took him in Naples, just sixty years old, at the height of a human and artistic experience that immediately made him a comics classic: loved, collected and studied like very few other authors.

The Trieste exhibition offers a wide selection of original plates, including all 48 relating to Marcel Labrume's first adventure, together with a selection of "loose" plates (dedicated above all to illustrious historical figures created for "Il Giornalino") and two of the architectural projects developed by Micheluzzi upon his return to Italy after his African experience. The exhibition is accompanied by a video of the artist's biographical reconstruction and a loop video relating to the album covers, many of which are also on display.

Source: Regional Institute for Istrian-Fiumano-Dalmatian Culture