Pordenone, kicks off major Milo Manara exhibition with 90 original works

From May 7 to August 15, 2021, the PAFF! Palazzo Arti Fumetto Friuli in Pordenone is hosting the exhibition Manara Secret Gardens, a solo show by cartoonist Milo Manara (Luson, 1945), which aims to follow his artistic journey and discover the many worlds he has visited by highlighting the depth of his aesthetic vision and sensibility as an artist that led him to become one of the most influential cartoonists on the international scene, and not only in what concerns erotic comics, his specialty. So, after the solo exhibitions of Giorgio Cavazzano, Gradimir Smudja, Milton Caniff and DC/Marvel Superheroes, the PAFF! Palazzo Arti Fumetto Friuli intends to offer itself again as a hub of cultural initiatives concerning the most prestigious signatures of international comics.

The title of the exhibition, which takes its cue from Frances Hodgson Burnett ’s 1910 novel, is meant to allude to Manara’s works, but at the same time it also opens up to the different narrative, scenographic, and mental universes explored by the artist during his long career, and certainly to the green context (PAFF’s Galvani Park) in which this exhibition is organized. The exhibition proposes an unprecedented exploration of the Veronese cartoonist’s eclecticism, placing at the center of the path a dimension that is as transversal as it is subtle in his work: the fantastic imagination. A dimension that accompanies his trajectory since his first steps in publishing and that, not by chance, is the only glue in that kaleidoscope of genres, settings and stylistic registers that is his masterpiece Giuseppe Bergman (1978 - 2004), a condensation of an entire artistic parabola in comics.

On display are 90 originals by Manara including comic book plates, drawings for advertising, illustrations, tributes, and variant covers for Marvel comics; 3 original drawings by Federico Fellini, personally donated by the director to Manara; 4 comic book storyboards sketched by him; an autographed letter and a watercolor layout for Hugo Pratt’s El Gaucho. The selection also includes works rarely exhibited in the past, such as a panel from his experimental early work Alessio the Revolutionary Bourgeois and three illustrations created for a special collection of Ulysse Nardin watches. The original plates include some plates from the work Caravaggio, a 2015 two-volume account dedicated to the 17th-century master, depicted by Manara with the features of his friend and colleague Andrea Pazienza.

Within the exhibition design, conceived by the Venice-based Corde Architetti studio, several experiential installations enrich the mass of works in the exhibition, which, with its four rooms, aspires to be one of the most important ever created on the famous Veronese author: passing through them, visitors can interact in compliance with anti-Covid regulations, thanks to projections and audio video content. The exhibition will be accompanied by a program of guided tours with an engaging and original character led by Roberto Fratantonio, while even for those who cannot go to the exhibition in person, it will be possible to visit it online via a complete virtual tour in high definition. The Manara Secret Gardens exhibition is also the first exhibition realization that concretizes the synergy forged just before the pandemic wave between the Pordenone facility and the Neapolitan Comicon festival, which aims to create a national link between the two prestigious identities in the north and south of the boot and which aims to realize ambitious exhibitions of international caliber. Produced by PAFF! and curated by Claudio Curcio, Matteo Stefanelli, Alino of COMICON, the exhibition sees the contribution of the Autonomous Region of Friuli Venezia Giulia at the Villa Galvani Gallery of Modern Art, made available by the City of Pordenone.

“It is wonderful news that at the reopening of museums and cultural venues my exhibition at PAFF! is finally starting, in a venue entirely dedicated to comics and their forms of expression that are finally beginning to find a proper home in Italy,” says Milo Manara. “Comics that I have tried to explore in my 50-year career and that are summarized in the path of this particular exhibition that has chosen an unusual cut to present my work. I hope that visitors from Friuli and beyond will appreciate the project made by the curators and set designers to present my comics and illustrations, looking forward to returning to Pordenone in person, hopefully as soon as possible and by the end of the exhibition.”

“We are deeply satisfied that we were able to fulfill the promise made to Manara 3 years ago at the opening of PAFF! to dedicate a prestigious solo exhibition to him,” says PAFF! artistic director Giulio De Vita. “Milo brought well to the opening of the Palazzo del Fumetto in Pordenone: an ambitious and difficult challenge. And today, with this exhibition, Milo himself returns to bring us good omens to revive better times beyond the oppression of the pandemic situation, and he does so with the lightness and elegance of his artistic stroke to fly beyond the high hedges of secret gardens.”

“Milo Manara’s artistic journey,” Matteo Stefanelli points out, “has been and still is that of a curious and eclectic author, although focused around a few key nodes. This exhibition testifies to this thanks to the originality of the perspective that, around the knot of the fantastic dimension, allows to cross the entire corpus of his fifty-year production, from the imagery of science fiction and fantasy to the dialogue with History and cinema. A stimulating occasion, I believe, based on unusual juxtapositions and arrangements capable of suggesting the imaginative richness of one of the protagonists of international comics.”

“After months of forced closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” notes Regional Councillor for Culture Tiziana Gibelli, “PAFF! reopens with a major international exhibition dedicated to the master of comics Milo Manara. The exhibition ”Secret Gardens“ traces the career of the great artist with a journey into imagination that reaches the cinema with the section dedicated to Fellini’s Fantasies. This is an important exhibition, capable of attracting audiences from abroad as well, and one that looks to the future with renewed optimism, in the hope that we can finally return to the normality that we have so sorely lacked in recent times, even in the field of culture. Culture absolutely needs to restart in presence. And Pordenone restarts in a big way with the exhibition of one of the world’s most celebrated cartoonists. The city confirms itself even in this difficult time as one of Italy’s most important cultural centers. Net of the pandemic, that of PAFF! is a bet that its promoters and the City Council, who strongly wanted it, are winning. We hope, norms permitting, to receive visitors from outside the city, since such an exhibition has the potential to attract audiences from all over Italy and abroad.”

Pordenone, kicks off major Milo Manara exhibition with 90 original works

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