Artworks
from lot n. 1 to lot n. 62

Autumn, 1968. According to the legend, Franco Bonvicini, from Modena, sketch drawer and collaborator with some animation studios, is sitting in an osteria thinking to an idea for a comic book to be submitted to a contest organized by the newspaper Paese Sera that will be held at the Forth Edition of Salone Internazionale dei Comics in Lucca.
The wine, his innate and caustic sense of humor against institutions, and the purely aesthetic passion for everything concerning the theme of the war lead him to draw some soldiers. On those sheets, all the cast of Sturmtruppen was born.
For the jokes, Bonvi mixes everything he has learned in years and years of comic book reading, his own experience during the military draft, The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati, the works of Mario Rigoni Stern and the must-read of the pacifist movement, starting from the well-known Catch-22, written by Joseph Heller in 1961.
Useless to say that this mixture of ingredients will be a scandal. Sturmtruppen won the competition and was published in Paese Sera and in the Almanac of Lucca IV.
The next year is published on L’Ora, where it becomes a daily strip, a rare thing in Italy.
Collections, in single issues to be sold in the newsstand and in big volumes, will be published for almost 30 years until the death of its creators the 10^th of December 1995, both in Italy and abroad, translated in eleven different languages including Russian – thereby becoming the first foreign comic book presented in USSR.
Bonvi was very jealous of the comics he made, he hardly let his drawings to be touched by his assistants who could only glue the vellum or write the lettering. The characters and the painting were realized by him, he also adjusted or re-drew the strips.
He had a bad habit: very often, when a strip had to be re-published, he used to redrew it, probably not fully satisfied by his own style, or simply, because he couldn’t find the original. In fact, there are many versions of the first strips. He sometimes used photocopies with whom he could collage the drawings in the different formats of the many re-publications.
This collage was made possible because the strips were drawn with a classical technique, with pencil, rarely brush, and vellum, the same technique used by the American authors Bonvi loved. When he exceeded the rigid structure of the strips, then he could experiment. In his production we can find cover colored with an airbrush or with felt tip pen, comic arts colored in the back, illustration in rare sizes and techniques.
Today Sturmtruppen is a classic, read, re-read and reprinted, but there was the risk that the series would be interrupted after a few years with the strip #1450. To rescue the German soldier from an early end came Umberto Eco that one night in an osteria “explained to me that the strips had to be done”, as Bonvi said in an interview to Red Ronnie in the Nineties. And he added – “if Sturmtruppen are still being done since more than 20 years, Umberto Eco is to blame”.
And we, humbly, thank the Professor.

(extract from the introduction to the catalog)

Artworks
from lot n. 262 to lot n. 275

Born in Milan in 1927, De Gaspari’s father was a draughtsman from whom the young Giorgio learnt to draw.  Accepted into the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera in Milan his first job after graduating was to fill in for the popular cartoonist and illustrator, Walter Molino, whenever Molino was unable to complete a commission.

His first illustration was published in 1947 for the Sunday paper, La Domenica del Corriere, a paper well known for its illustrations. De Gaspari’s output was prodigious, producing more than 1000 illustrations for the paper, contributing until 1970.

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s De Gaspari was commissioned to produce illustrations for children’s books, working for Italian publishers Valladri, Agostoni, Lucchi and Fabbri.  He illustrated some classic titles, such as Pinocchio, Don Quixote, The Three Musketeers, Moby Dick, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and various fairy tale collections.

De Gaspari also worked as part of the D’Ami studio in Milan, receiving regular commissions from English clients, among them Fleetway Publications. For Fleetway he produced a number of covers for the Sexton Blake series. De Gaspari continued to provide covers for Fleetway’s genre fiction or “pocket libraries”, including Cowboy Picture Library (30 covers, 1958-60), Thriller Picture Library (39 covers, 1958-60) and Super Detective Library (4 covers, 1960).  In the U.K. he became best known for his work with the magazine, War Picture Library, illustrating 32 of the first 48 covers between 1958 and 1960.

De Gaspari’s work was highly innovative, characterised by bold juxtapositions of colour, and dramatic compositions that played with perspective.  He would often experiment with materials, tools and techniques, introducing gritty textures, sometimes scratching surfaces, layering materials or including sand in his images.

In 1966 he dropped out.  Abandoning his career to travel the world, he eventually returned to Italy where he made Venice his home.  He constructed a floating studio from salvaged materials off a small island in the Venetian lagoon, eking out a living by painting portraits of tourists in Saint Mark’s square.  He resisted offers of work by former colleagues, who regarded him as a master of his form, and rejected approaches by influential figures from the art and design world keen to stage solo exhibitions of his work.  He died in Venice in October 2012.

“La rosa di Bagdad”
by A. G. Domenighini, 1949 (version française)

“Una rosa di guerra”
by Massimo Becattini, 2009 (complete documentary)