Pordenone celebrates the 80th birthday of Altan, the father of Pimpa, with an exhibition

The fourteenth edition of Sentieri illustrati, which celebrateschildren’s illustration every year, is dedicated to the colorful world of Altan, the great cartoonist and father of Pimpa, who this year blows out his eighty candles. Promoted by the Centro Iniziative Culturali Pordenone, the exhibition entitled Francesco Tullio Altan, Pimpa and His Friends will be open from Saturday, October 8, in the spaces of the Sagittaria Gallery, until November 27, 2022. On the occasion of the opening there will be a meeting at 5 p.m. with Francesco Tullio Altan in the Lino Zanussi Auditorium of the Pordenone Student House. The meeting will be followed by the varnishing of the exhibition. Speaking with Altan will be Sentieri Illustrati curators Silvia Pignat and Angelo Bertani, along with CICP president Maria Francesca Vassallo.

The exhibition kicks off with an initial playful-immersive part in which young readers of Pimpa will be welcomed by the cute polka-dotted dog and her friends, and will be able to enter Pimpa’s little house or engage in reading the picture books featuring her. The atrium preceding the Gallery will feature some of his Trino and Cipputi stripes, fulminating micro-stories that have made Altan’s essential style famous. Finally, in the spaces of Sala Zuzzi, we enter Altan’s creative workshop: on one wall is displayed the famous story in which Armando discovers Pimpa among the foliage of a bush; in the same room will be displayed some storyboards, the original plates and a visual sequence of the creative process of Altan’s comics, from sketch to board.

“Thank you, Altan, for being a true friend to so many children and adults,” comments CICP President Maria Francesca Vassallo. “With the enthusiasm of his characters, it is nice to go to the discovery of the deep sea, the depth of the sky, the world of numbers and to know the world of emotions. It is easy to learn, and especially to understand that we have the skills to be well with ourselves and others.” “Curiosity is Pimpa’s main endowment,” Angelo Bertani notes. “The one that allows her to discover new things from time to time, to explore new worlds, to make many new friends. She is certainly not afraid of what is unusual; on the contrary, she is always ready to explore and make direct and sincere contact with those who appear friendly and helpful. With all of them she goes out to discover fantastic dimensions, which color reality, even the minimal and everyday reality, with further and deeper meaning: so an old armchair welcomes her to tell her a fairy tale, the refrigerator makes her breakfast, the little horse on a merry-go-round wins a race at the racetrack with her, and the placid moon, after drinking milk in her company, returns to the sky bigger and brighter. It is Armando who found her by chance in a forest and decided to host her in his home. A liking is born between them at first sight, but Pimpa is a free spirit: she sees in Armando a kind, hospitable and generous friend, maybe even a little boring at times with all that good sense. She will never be his lapdog, however; she will always maintain that autonomy that will allow her to discover the world, adventure after adventure. Pimpa has a holistic view of the world; she is ecologist in the strictest sense, and not casual and fashionable: for her, the world of nature is closely linked to the world of culture. In the Neverland of the fantastic dimension, all beings recover the mythical language of origins, the prebabelic language with which all beings communicated: and so does Pimpa, instinctively, by virtue of the state of nature.”

If Pimpa was born from Altan’s pencil in 1975, to tell new stories to his daughter Kika, soon after came Armando, Rosita the cat, Sandro the mouse, Vito the calf, Colombino, and Coniglietto. A microcosm that has fascinated children for almost forty years, and guides them into a joyful world of continuous discovery.

Francesco Tullio Altan, simply known as Altan, born in Treviso in 1942, did his early studies in Bologna and attended the Faculty of Architecture in Venice. In the late 1960s he was in Rome and worked as a set designer and also collaborated for film and television as a screenwriter. His first cartoons and illustrations were published by the men-only monthly magazine Playmen. He moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1970 and works in Brazilian cinema. In 1974 he began regular collaboration as a cartoonist with Italian newspapers and returned to his homeland in 1975, settling first in Milan, then in Aquileia. That same year Pimpa, the little red polka-dotted dog beloved by children, was born, and his first adult cartoons appeared in Linus, a newspaper of which he would be a permanent contributor for years; his famous political satire cartoons were published by Tango, Cuore, and Smemoranda, but also appeared in many other Italian newspapers, such as L’Espresso and the daily La Repubblica. Since 1977 he has published numerous books and comic novels. Starting in 1992, he illustrated the entire series of Gianni Rodari’s novels and short stories. Between 1982 and 1983 he worked on a series, directed by Osvaldo Cavandoli, of twenty-six animated films with the character of Pimpa for an international RAI television co-production, replicated several times in various countries. In 1990 he won the Capri prize for journalism, and in 2001 he was awarded three prizes: the Grinzane Junior for the book Pimpa vola in Africa, the Pozzale for the book Anni Frolli, and the È Giornalismo prize awarded to him by Giorgio Bocca and Enzo Biagi “because his cartoons, with an extraordinary capacity for information and synthesis, take on an importance no less than a background article.” Altan boasts a fruitful collaboration in the field of advertising and publishing, his drawings and cartoons are in great demand and are published in anthological and collective works, to illustrate covers of other authors, in national and foreign newspapers and periodicals and websites.

The exhibition is free admission, Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon and 4 to 7 p.m.

Workshops for schools with the participation of illustrators will be activated from Oct. 24 to Nov. 11, 2022.

Info and details at www.centroculturapordenone.it

Pordenone celebrates the 80th birthday of Altan, the father of Pimpa, with an exhibition

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