Cong publishes the Catalog of the exhibition “Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas” – Lo Spazio Bianco
From Genoa to the South Seas
Just released in the bookstore “Sergeant Kirk“N ° 63, the catalog of the great Genoa exhibition The catalog of the exhibition”Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas“, Published by CONG, reproduces the 63rd issue of “Sgt. Kirk ”, the magazine founded in 1967 by Florenzo Ivaldi dove was born Corto. In the central pages contains the unpublished by Sgt. Kirk: “Wahtee’s justice“.
The catalog
After the great success of “Black Ocean (read our review here) – the new story of Corto Maltese scripted by Martin Quenehen and designed by Bastien Vives (three editions in one month) – Cong returns to bookstores, comic shops and online bookstores with a new title. It is the catalog of the great exhibition that Genoa is dedicating to Hugo Pratt at the Palazzo Ducale.
“The bridge that connects Pratt to Genoa is called Florenzo Ivaldi, a building contractor lent to publishing who in 1967 founded the comic magazine“ Sgt. Kirk ”precisely to have among his“ employees ”the artist he most admired. And it is from the pages of Sgt. Kirk that Corto Maltese, born in the first issue of the magazine, with the famous story “A Ballad of the Salty Sea” then left for the South Seas to never stop over the next 28 years. of travels together with its author, a couple who from Genoa first conquered European readers and then those from all over the world ”he writes Patrizia Zanotti – curator of the exhibition – in the introduction to the catalog that faithfully reproduces number 63 of the historic magazine, which stopped publishing after several years at number 62.
Gianni Brunoro retraces those years there, he who witnessed the birth of the immortal sailor as a collaborator of the magazine from the beginning. Riccardo Capoferro analyzes Pratt’s African experience between the period of colonialism (when the master went to Ethiopia following his military father) and subsequent travels that inspired masterpieces such as “the Ethiopians“And”The scorpions of the desert“.
Francesco Boille tells of the boundless and icy spaces of North America, the land of borders between the United States and Canada and above all the new image of the cowboy that Hugo Pratt and Héctor German Oesterheld: “The Adventures of Sergeant Kirk is the first western comic to change the gaze on American Indians. Before Lieutenant Blueberry’s Charlier And Giraud, before Ken Parker’s Berardi And Milazzo, ahead of the more mature Tex and before almost all Hollywood films. It is practically the series from which it all started ”. Those spaces that Pratt will retrace after Kirk with Ticonderoga and above all Wheeling. Emiliano Ventura tells the story of Tango and Argentina, the pampas and Patagonia, other scenarios of Pratt’s life where young people started and where they continued even when he had already left for Europe. Finally the imaginary – but not too much – Seas of the South, told by Marco Steiner, a collaborator of Pratt then and an established writer today:
“The Pacific by Hugo Pratt is the rough and infinite poetry of the sea, it is a balm to travel, continue to dream and to look for something so beautiful that it is
impossible to grasp “.
the unpublished
“Wahtee” is the name by which the Apache Indians refer to Sergeant Kirk. Ivonne is a girl who works in a saloon and who is mysteriously killed. The cowboys blame Tulapai, an Apache who was supposed to marry her. But this is not the case and the great Sgt. Kirk will find the culprit and redeem the unjustly accused Indian.
“The justice of Wahtee” is the title of the story – unpublished for Europe – that Cong publishes in the catalog of the exhibition “Hugo Pratt, from Genoa to the South Seas” which opens in Genoa, at the Palazzo Ducale, on 14 October and which will remain open to the public until March 20, 2022.
The story, published only in Argentina in May 1956 in the magazine Misterix, was recovered in the archives of Guillermo Parker And Aldo Pravia, two passionate Argentine collectors of the works of Hugo Pratt and this special edition was colored for CONG SA by Ilias Engheben, a young Milanese artist.
The exhibition
The exhibition is promoted and organized by Genoa Palazzo Ducale Foundation for Culture and CMS Culture, curated by Patrizia Zanotti, who has ideally mapped out a new route, which from Genoa takes us to the places of the Prato imaginary overseas. So let’s get ready to set sail on this journey set up on over 1000 square meters, with more than 200 watercolors, originals, images, literary references and stories and which speak of idealists, revolutionaries, adventurous women and extraordinary men, from Lieutenant Koïnsky to Anna Livingstone, from Ticonderoga to Corto Maltese. Paraphrasing Wheeling, the path this time will be that of new friendships.
Last gem: in the rooms the narrator of the audio guides is by Marco Steiner, who through his profound knowledge of the works and of Pratt, accompanies the guests in an emotional and profound immersion on the routes traced by the Venetian master.