guido crepax: he was thirty two when he created his heroine 'valentina'

guido crepax: he was thirty two when he created his heroine 'valentina' ..........................................................................................................................

......................... shop .................. competitions .............. education ................ interviews ................... snapshots ................... history .......... contemporary

august 2003

in memory of guido crepax

one of the greatest masters of the comic strip genre,
guido crepax (crepas) died july, 31th in milan, italy.

valentina
is the most known character created by guido crepax.
crepax was thirty two when he created his heroine 'valentina',
her name, above all, reminds us her haircut...
it was valentina which proved for crepax the potentiality of cartoon
literature or 'fumetti', an art form he had previously attempted
when as a young evacuee during world war II in venice he had read
and loved the american cartoon strips 'mandrake' and 'flash gordon'.
'my first cartoon,' he recalled, 'I did when I was twelve and it was called
'the invisible man', and it obviously followed very closely the film
of the same name. I put everything together on my own, the
screenplay as it were, the writing and the drawings...'
twenty years later crepax set about creating his cartoon strip for
linus with the same attention to planning, storyline, lettering and framing,
inventing his own male super hero 'neutron',
'with the magnetic eyes of mandrake and the physical build of the
traditional man In the mask.' he said.
gradually neutron disappeared from the story.
it was almost by chance and without premeditation that the true
protagonist would prove to be valentina,
'the incarnation of the actress louise brooks, the masochistic dreamer,
the all powerful photographer, the most beautiful androgyne with
the most beautiful backside in the world'. to say it with his own words.

---
the valentina stories have psychedelic storyline, they are all part of
a provocative, languidly hallucinatory tale.
valentina lives in the city of milan, her background is the
italian bourgeois and the discovery of the mundane pleasures.
valentina is an accomplished young photographer living the life.
she stays out all night and sleeps till noon, when attractive models
come over to bare their goods for the eye of valentina's camera.
one night she walks home to avoid the advances of director
arno treves (!) and is nearly run over by a cold blonde in a fancy car.
the woman is baba yaga (!) ...
in a series of extravagant and often surreal adventures
valentina would soon know the rages of bisexuality, autoerotic ecstasy,
super-sensual abandon, and the sadomasochistic delirium,
valentina has fevered dreams of nazis, underwear, and big holes in
the ground. crepax' adult audience must be capable of seizing the
ambiguities behind appearances, distinguishing the true fantasies
from stark reality.
- 'valentina' scandalised many readers in italy and abroad and
was the inspiration for a series of similar sexy and captivating heroines
who would keep crepax busy at his drawing board for years to come.
'valentina' (1968)
'valentina con gli stivali (1970)
'ciao valentina' (1972)
'valentina nella stufa' (1973)
'diario di valentina' (1975)
'a proposito di valentina' (1975)
'valentina in giallo' (1976)
'valentina assassina' (1977)
'lanterna magica' (1978)
'il ritratto di valentina' (1979)
'valentina pirata' (a colori, 1980)
'valentina sola' (1981)
'valentina, storia di una storia' (1982)
'per amore di valentina' (1983)
'io valentina. la vita e le opere' (1985)
'nessuno' (1990)
'valentina la gazza ladra' (1992)
'valentina a venezia' (1992)
'e valentina va' (1994)
'encyclopedie de valentina' (1994)
'al diavolo, valentina' (1996)

---
more erotic stories
recurring themes were those of victimized girls, sadomasochism
and violence. it is not surprising that guido crepax illustrated
classic erotic stories like de sade's 'justine', pauline réage's
'histoire d'O' and sacher-masoch's 'venus in furs'.
'so if I have drawn whips, chains, bonds of every kind," he said,
'even if I have reproduced in my pictures the most audacious bold
erotic perversions, I in fact hate violence and lack of respect towards
oneself and to others, and all forms of excess. the extraordinary things
that my poor young girls in love undergo - valentina, and bianca,
anita and justine, emmanuelle and madame O - have nothing to
do with the treatises on sexual psychopathology.
they are only visionary exercises, imaginary madness transferred
onto paper, deliriums, desires ruled by a purely cerebral mechanism...
what interests me more than anything else is that the game never
becomes obscene, that it is never trapped by vulgarity'.

---

see a short biography of guido crepax

---

-------
monthly designboom newsletter
-------

-------
? comments and contact us ?
-------

valentina
copyright © guido crepax

valentina
copyright © guido crepax

actress louise brooks