Hugo Pratt on display at the Besso Foundation in Rome

What links Hugo Pratt to Homer, Rudyard Kipling, Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kenneth Roberts, and Somerset Maugham? And what brings Corto Maltese closer to Thomas Moore, William Shakespeare, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Baron Corvo, and Hermann Hesse? From September 27th to December 20thin the halls of the Strozzi-Besso Palace (in Largo di Torre Argentina 11, in Rome) there will be the exhibition ‘Hugo Pratt’s Geographical Library, a Journey into Real and Imaginary Literature‘, included in the celebrations for the centenary of the Foundation’s Library.

An exhibition of over 40 original plates and watercolorslarge reproductions, films and vintage magazines, which will accompany us in the universe of literary references in the works of Hugo Pratt, through the geographical itineraries of the author and his characters. “From tropical islands to African deserts, from our Europe to the New World, up to the adventures of Ulysses and Corto Maltese. Hugo Pratt reminds us with great spontaneity that we are all eternal navigatorsalways in search of new times and new geographies. Because travel is a mental dimension rather than a physical one”, declares Lucio Caracciolo, president of the Marco Besso Foundation.

“What always struck me about Pratt was his immense library and his obstinate need to know. He traveled to places around the world but he traveled – and a lot – among his books. He read and reread the page of a novel, he stopped to delve into a poem, he wrote down the paragraph of a history essay. Literature, together with cinema, music and every other form of art, was his horizon line. This exhibition tries to tell all this”, says Patrizia Zanotti, curator of the exhibition together with Nadège Vaïnas, a long-time collaborator of Pratt and current managing director of CONG sa, the company that manages the rights of all the artistic work of the great Venetian designer.

From the Pacific with R.L. Stevenson to the Africa of Kipling and Rimbaud and the frontier horizons of JO Curwood and Fenimore Cooper, passing through the books that accompany Corto Maltese during his long travels including Parzifal by Wolfram von Eschenbach, Utopia by Thomas Moore, The Last Summer of Klingsor by Hermann Hesse and again Coleridge and Yeats. A continuous mix of real or fantastic encounters in the company of Tamara de Lempicka, Marina Seminova, Amelia Earhart, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and Ulysses.

The original plates of the Odyssey, drawn by Pratt in 1963 for Corriere dei Piccoli, are dedicated to him, the progenitor of the sailor Corto Maltese. A beautiful journey, across the seas, dreams, and suggestions to discover the literary fathers who inspired Pratt: “in a certain sense, I am the son of all. I have always said that everything has been written, that we can only rewrite”.