From 22nd June to 28th July, as part of the 3rd edition of Coconino Fest, the MAR – Ravenna Art Museum hosts FREEDOM. SETTE SGUARDI D’AUTORE: GEOGRAFIE E GENERAZIONI DEL FUMETTO, with seven sections dedicated to various authors, from the most famous ones published by Coconino to the new Italian talents.
GIPI: StacyFor the first time on display the original drawings of Stacy, Gipi’s most recent comic book. They tell the story of Gianni, a scriptwriter of successful TV series who falls into disgrace and ends up in the stocks on social media for some inappropriate words uttered in an interview. Starting from an autobiographical episode, Gipi tells us much more than that and makes us reflect on freedom of expression, the role of the artist in the society and the mechanisms of social networks, alternating narrative registers in a book full of pain, comedy and sweetness.
USAMARU FURUYA: Il lato oscuro del Giappone
Japanese manga in Ravenna with Usamaru Furuya, one of the most appreciated Japanese masters in Italy and author of various masterpieces that wisely measure irony, eroticism, fantasy and horror concerns. On display the drawings of Hikari Club, one of his cult works, soon to be published in Italian by Coconino Press.
VALENTINE CUNY-LE CALLET: Perpendicolare al sole
Perpendicolare al sole is an extraordinary story in pictures combining confessions and intimate reflections to a strong condemnation of prison regime, of death penalty and racism. On display the drawings of this graphic novel, first work of the author that stems from a correspondence with Renaldo McGirth, who has been detained for several years on death row in a prison in Florida.
ANKE FEUCHTENBERGER: Compagna cuculo
Mixing memory, dream, fairy tale and seductive visual metaphors, the most important author of German comics tells the story of a little girl growing up with her grandmother in a village in East Germany, from the 1960s to the fall of the Berlin Wall. A visionary bildungsroman, where the themes of denied affection and the violent reality are balanced by unbridled fantasy, an almost mystical love for nature and subtle irony.
FILIPPO SCÒZZARI: La Dalia BluLa Dalia Blu is a screenplay for the cinema by the famous American writer Raymond Chandler, which Scòzzari adapted into comics in the 1980s in the pages of the legenday magazine Frigidaire. Today, Scòzzari has reworked the work, whose original drawings were irreparably compromised, and redrawn it all. The new drawings, on preview at the MAR Museum, once again perform the magic of combining the classic charm of Chandler’s noir with the unmistakable irreverent touch and sarcastic irony of Scòzzari’s characters.
ANTONIO PRONOSTICO: L’eletto
L’eletto is Antonio Pronostico’s third graphic novel. A brilliant corporate noir, a novel and subtly disturbing novel starring a young poet with beautiful calligraphy who finds himself working in a mysterious office. Between Kafkaesque events and social satire, Pronostico’s pencils and colours on display at the MAR Museum evoke the lessons of the great masters of illustration.
COCONINO’S YOUNG ARTISTSA group exhibition displays the drawings of four artists who have published their debut graphic novels in the past year or are about to publish it. Enrico Pinto has already garnered unanimous public and critical acclaim with the dystopian Lo schermo bianco; Michele Peroncini is coming to the fore with the poetic and picaresque adventure I moti celesti; Roberto Guerinoni, aka SPAM Il Mandarino Psichico, won the first Tuono Pettinato prize with Storia umida, which is being released at Coconino Fest; Isabella Tiveron is working on the comic book adaptation of Fine, the apocalyptic novel written by Giuseppe Civati and the recently deceased Marco Tiberi, which warns us against our indifference to climate change.
