Artworks
from lot n. 1 to lot n. 25

In 1941 Giuseppe Porcheddu presented to the editorial board of Topolino magazine a big and ambitious project: a new and illustrated edition of Gulliver’s Travels, in colors and presented in the double central pages of the weekly comic. Unfortunately because of the war and the fascist censorship (against the realization of American-like comics), the publishing of  Gulliver was postponed and the original drawings were stocked in the archive of the publisher Mondadori.
Porcheddu’s Gulliver was clearly a masterpiece, but only few of his friends and colleagues had the privilege to see it: even its existence was questioned until the oblivion fell upon this project.  Nobody talked about this project for over 30 years, until the wife of the artist found in the family archive the pencil-drawings of the big comic arts of the illustrated adaptation of Swift’s classic.
After this discovery, we know that the Viaggi di Gulliver was consisting of 60 double comic arts, meaning 120 pages to be published weekly in the colored central pages of Topolino magazine. After the discharge of the material preserved in the Mondadori archive in 1988, 50 (25 double pages) of the 120 pages made by Porcheddu are now available, published and shown to the world for the very first time after 80 years in this catalog.
Urania Auction House offers to the collectors the amazing chance to become keepers of the greatest masterpiece of the Italian comics.

Artworks
from lot n. 26 to lot n. 84

Durañona

Everything started in November 1966 when David Lipszyc, visionary Argentinian publisher, gave birth to Colección Altamira, a collection of comic book adaptation of the classic tales of adventure literature, starting with the first (and only) issue: “The treasure Island” by Hugo Pratt. The editor planned to publish in the following issues an adaptation of The “Three musketeers and the man in the iron mask”, drawn by Arturo del Castillo, and of “Moby Dick”. The masterpiece of Melville was committed by Lipszyc to a young Argentinian illustrator, Leopoldo Durañona,  promising disciple of Alberto Breccia and a prolific author in his country and USA (where he will work to fantasy-horror series such as “Weird War Tales”, “Weird Mistery Tales” and “The House of Secrets”). Durañona drew 21 pages of his Moby Dick  when the project of Lipszyc was aborted because of economical problems and the realization was stopped. The great comic art of the Argentinian Master, never published, continued to “live” thanks to the exhibition at the first Bienal Mundial de la Historieta, held at the Instituto Di Tella of Buenos Aires in 1968. Artistic director of the event was Lipszyc together with Oscar Masotta.
Nobody heard anything of the original comic arts until 1977 when the Argentinian publishing house Editorial Record decided to complete the opera started by Lipszyc more than a decade ago. The publishing house met Durañona, who refused to finish the work he begun in 1966 but proposed to re-draw it completely, and then decided to ask to Enrique Breccia to finish the job his colleague started. The 21 pages of Moby Dick by Durañona were published in Italy in the magazine Lanciostory (year V n. 7) in 1979.

Breccia

As told in the previous pages, in 1977 Argentinian publishing house Editorial Record commissioned to Enrique Breccia the second part of the adaptation of “Moby Dick”, started by Durañona in 1966. Breccia drew 36 pages, comic arts of extreme beauty, with dramatic and claustrophobic tone that match perfectly with the masterpiece of Melville. The Argentinian Master divided the narration in three chapters of 12 pages each, telling the fundamental passages of the epic story of the Pequod and Captain Achab. These 36 pages were published in Italy in the magazine Lanciostory, 8 – 9 – 10 of the year V in 1979.

Caprioli

Franco Caprioli, one of the most sophisticated and talented author of the Italian fumetto, spent the last months of his life to one of the most exploited and challenging literary subjects of all time: Moby Dick. In 1975, the year after the departure of the artist, in the collection I quaderni del fumetto n. 20, published by Fratelli Spada, appeared the last work by Caprioli “Moby Dick: La balena bianca”. The adaptation of Melville’s masterpiece was designed by Caprioli in 80 pages filled with adventures, using in every one of them a different graphic style he had explored throughout his career, from the famous pointillisme up the use of the straight line. An important work, the spiritual will of the comic artist who more than anyone else embodied the spirit of the sea, this time dealing with the most famous sea novel of all time.

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

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