Sketch Drawings by Chevalier Fortunino Matania

My recent acquisition, a pencil sketch drawings of the christening scene(?) by the Italian artist Chevalier Fortunino Matania (1881 – 1963). 

This sketch is from the time when artists were trying to save paper, not ideas. That is why he used both sides of the paper.  

Chevalier Fortunino Matania was known for his realistic portrayal of World War I trench warfare and for a wide range of historical subjects. He also worked on the movie "The Ten Commandments" by Cecil B. DeMille. For this movie, he produced a number of paintings of Rome and Egypt to be sure that authentic designs were created. You can see more of Chevalier Fortunino Matania's work here.

 

My Work in a New Illustration Textbook

I just received the new textbook Illustration: A Theoretical and Contextual Perspective written by Alan Male and published by the English publishing company Bloomsbury Visual Arts.

Alan Male is an illustrator, academic, and writer. He directed the Illustration program at Falmouth University, UK, for many years. Alan has written and edited several books about illustration and has won a number of international awards for his work.

I was quite pleased to see that the book features quite a few of my illustrations, posters, and visual essays. 

You can see more of the work featured in this book here.

 

Refugees

This is a photograph showing a Serbian woman, Milica Tepić, escaping her village with her two children just before Ustaše (a Croatian fascist) burned it. The photo was taken in January 1944 by George Skrigin, who was part of the partisan resistance and accidentally stumbled upon Milica. 

Milica died in 1949. Her husband, Branko, a partisan resistance fighter, was hanged by the Nazis in 1942. Like his father, the little boy on Milica's back was called Branko. He was born one month after his father's death. He died in 2022 at the age of 81. His sister Dragica died in 1983.

The photograph as a witness of suffering and struggle for survival is one of the exhibits in the Holocaust Museum in Auschwitz.

This powerful image embedded itself in my memory at a young age. Today whenever I hear about refugees or displaced people, this image comes to my mind. 

What would have happened to her and her children if she was not allowed to escape the horrors behind her? What would have happened if she was forced to go back? Thinking of today's refugee and displaced people situation, I decided to create this visual essay using Milica's image.

 

"Ilustracion + Comix Internacional"

Once, I shared cover bylines with Breccia, Bilal, Eisner, Corben, Jones, and many more of my idols and comic legends.

Here are the covers of first two issues of the Spanish comics magazine "Ilustracion + Comix Internacional", published by Toutain Editor in 1980.

 

If you can read Spanish, you can read about "Ilustracion + Comix Internacional" here.