Benito Jacovitti 1923 – 1997

“Three are the authors who have better described 1900’s Italy ‘: Fellini, Sordi and Jacovitti”.                                                                                  (Oreste Del Buono)   

A unique and inimitable designer, he was born in Termoli, a town on the sea in the province of Campobasso. He began to draw at a very early age and used that irreverent irony that will identify him for life. At the age of 7, as he admits, he drawn Italo Balbo, putting on his uniform, instead of the bundles on the badges, scythe and hammer. His father, who hadn’t noticed anything, then proudly showed his son’s work to the comrades of the fascist circle who certainly didn’t like it.

Surreal, ecclectic, ironic, brilliant author of incredible scenes that seem to come out of a Bosh painting, where it is impossible to find an empty space. His crowded cartoons anticipate the times of contemporary American comics, influencing all the cartoonists who will come after him until the mythical Andrea Pazienza who will always recognize the strong influence of the Molise master and his very personal and revolutionary style.

Carl Barks, one of the greatest masters in the history of comics, inventor of Donald Duck and his world, called Jacovitti the best European cartoonist. JAC was an artist who told funny stories with a comic and surreal madness now unobtainable in the comics scene. Always attentive to the changes in contemporary reality, he created characters that represented the political and social changes in Italy during the economic boom and the 70s and 80s. He created unforgettable characters with fanciful and comic names: Cocco Bill, a very clever gunslinger from the Far West who ordered only chamomile tea at the saloon, his trusty and inseparable horse Trottalemme, and Osusanna Ailoviù, a romantic, unrequited troublemaker. The great master of the Comics was the one who most influenced the imagination of the Italians, the one who entered all the houses with his Diario Vitt, with whom generations of students have a debt of good humor and imagination.