At PAFF in Pordenone, an exhibition celebrates the timeless comics of master Jacovitti

Following the exhibitions in Termoli and Rome for the centenary of the birth of Benito Franco Giuseppe Jacovitti (Termoli, 1923 - Rome, 1997), the exhibition “Jacovitttti as you’ve never seen him” arrives at PAFF!, Pordenone ’s Palazzo del Fumetto. The exhibition, curated by Valerio Bindi and Luca Raffaelli, will be on view from June 6 until Oct. 13, 2024. The title coined for the Pordenone exhibition stems from Luca Raffaelli ’s meeting with the cartoonist. “Jacovitti’s apartment, in the Aurelio district in Rome, is completely normal -. No salami on the floor or fish bones as knick-knacks. Nor worms or cobwebs. In his study, rather, there is an interesting collection of antique weapons, alongside a series of paintings. On his desk is a barely sketched board of enormous size (”if I do the smaller drawings, it takes forever"), and on the next wall a large metal sign that says ’No Thinginging’. Above that another sign engraved Jacovitti with eight ’t’s. From that sign comes the title of the exhibition, which traces the characteristics of the style, the peculiarities of linguistic and page construction that distinguish the master of Italian comics. Looking at his creations makes it possible to retrace his work with a fresh look and see it as if for the first time. Jacovitti made his comics without writing script outlines, drawing directly in ink, inventing his fantastic stories. The original plates highlight this well: each outline line was a weave of very fine nib marks.

The exhibition features Jac ’s famous fillers (salami, worms, butterflies, dice and all the objects he drew to fill in the blanks), and you will be able to understand how he moved characters through kinetic lines and how he sounded his world through onomatopoeia. Words, too, are constantly reinvented with games and tongue twisters: leave the axe and accept the hatchet, or nonsense: “when Jacovitti passes out the ciripicchie, all the biscagliette come in gnoffa to make zunzù.” Bodies in this comic world are always poised between the real and the grotesque, continually cut, chopped, sawed, in an unstable but always found balance.

The ambition to narrate a great known and studied author is reflected in the exhibition catalog. Instead, in the book that accompanies the exhibition, one discovers what the path of dedication and study, of elaboration and method, the search for a life with its own unseen characteristics and recursive techniques, each time variant and reworked. The study of this never-before-seen Jacovitti is the focus of the book that PAFF! is premiering and that brings together essays, original images and the graphic designs that the curators have studied for a critical investigation that for the first time highlights how interconnected are the many levels between the signs of this giant of Italian comics. Exhibition and related catalog are enriched by an original typeface, specially developed for this occasion that will be made available by PAFF! for its visitors to spread this artistic peculiarity as well.

“It is an enormous pleasure and honor to host in our Palazzo del Fumetto 170 original works that, thanks to the willingness of his daughter Silvia, are displayed in the exhibition which, as is customary for us, is not a roundup of plates one next to the otherto give an account of the production of a lifetime but is for us, and we hope also for the public who will visit our facility, an in-depth investigation of the working method, the peculiar characteristics, the distinctive features of the work of the great cartoonist after a century since his birth. As a future memory of our tribute to the master from Termoli, a catalog has been produced that features reproductions of the original works on display, texts by the curators, a contribution by the great Luca Boschi, the late immortal connoisseur of the comics medium, an interview and a wonderful recollection by Silvia, who speaks as a daughter and an admirer of her father’s work for which we thank her once again,” says Marco Dabbà, president of PAFF!, co-curator of the catalog.

“In Jacovitti’s works there were no sketches, no notes. Over the years his technique had become unique, automatic, impossible to believe. This method of working could be understood from observation of his plates. Beginning with the outline lines that were not, as in the originals of his colleagues, simple lines, but nib interlacing, in which each interlaced figure was created on the spot, and that interlacing was a movement and sound on the paper (scrat, scrat) that immersed him in his creative flow. Jacovitti’s inner world was his creative engine. Spontaneity was his only possibility. That’s why he could not accept any censorship: he could not stop, adapt, order his flow otherwise he would have stopped the automatic mechanism, the one that allowed him to tell complex stories and to succeed in doing so with the same freedom with which one dreams, but managing to create balances, magnificent and perfect constructions,” says Luca Raffaelli, artistic director of PAFF! and co-curator of the catalog and exhibition.

“In this exhibition, Luca Raffaelli and I try to recount some characteristics that emerge from studies of Jacovitti’s pages that would have been difficult to bring into focus unless working by decomposition and subtraction. A formal analysis is needed to understand a world imagined through improvisation, without a script, perhaps only with a mental canvas, and a continuous explosion of comic gags, puffs, sounds and puns. The exploration, also surprising, conducted among the originals in Silvia Jacovitti’s archive has turned up some plates, unfinished pages of work, with the characters barely hinted at. These are clarifying documents of a working method,” says Valerio Bindi, co-curator of the catalog and exhibition

“PAFF! in recent years is offering us a gallery of the greatest Italian and international cartoonists. A classic like Jacovitti could not be missed. With his characters and his style at the same time pop and surrealist, he entered the collective imagination of millions of Italians. The hope is that with this great exhibition younger people can get to know him as well, thanks to the original way PAFF! always presents its exhibitions,” says Alberto Parigi, deputy mayor and culture councillor.

At PAFF in Pordenone, an exhibition celebrates the timeless comics of master Jacovitti

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