Altan. Pimpa, Cipputi and other thinkers.

After Zerocalcare – Digging Ditches, Feeding Crocodiles, we got back to work once again with MAXXI’s team.

This retrospective exhibition of the work by the comics artist and illustrator Francesco Tullio Altan gave us the chance to challenge ourselves with a great wealth of materials and play with images and spaces. We worked with the exhibition curators to create a display that allows visitors to dive into Altan’s world, surrounded by his characters and stories. The result is an articulated journey through his entire production, among original drawings, posters, illustrations, paintings, panels, boards, books and film clips.

We created the catalogue together with Franco Cosimo Panini Editore. It’s a little gem that contains a curated selection of Altan’s production, from the first unpublished works, to satirical comics, historical strips, illustrations, cinema, and his most famous character La Pimpa, of course.

The focus of the catalogue is on Altan’s characters: we gave them ample space of expression, with original drawings, posters, excerpts from Altan’s first editions, and his most significant strips from 1974 to the present day.

The catalogue also contains contributions from the curators, including Carlo Verdelli, Sergio Staino, Ezio Mauro, Marco Damilano and Ferruccio Giromini. The result is a lively and engaging presentation of Altan’s world, an exceptional window through which we can understand the magical universe of his characters.

Curated by Anne Palopoli and Luca Raffaelli, the exhibition “Altan. Pimpa, Cipputi and other thinkers” was organized in co-production with Fondazione Solares and Franco Cosimo Panini Editore.

It opened on October 23, 2019, and the original closing date of January 12 was then postponed to April 13, 2020.

Photo © Musacchio, Ianniello & Pasqualini, courtesy Fondazione MAXXI