Guido Crepax

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Guido Crepax, 1993

Guido Crepax (actually Guido Crepas ; born July 15, 1933 in Milan ; † July 31, 2003 ibid) was an Italian graphic artist who had a strong influence on the development of European adult comics in the second half of the 20th century.

Career

Guido Crepax first grew up in Milan. At the age of two to four he was already cutting out figures from newspaper without having drawn them. Because of the war, his family moved to Venice in 1942. Since games were difficult to obtain, he made the characters himself and developed his own rules for them, partly inspired by American comics. In 1945 the family returned to Milan, where Crepax age of twelve the film The Invisible Man by James Whale adapted for the first own comic.

After attending a natural science high school, Crepax studied architecture in Milan and received his doctorate there in 1958. He also worked as an illustrator of book covers and record covers . Most of these were publications of classical music and jazz . His first illustration assignment was to design an album title for Fats Waller . In 1957 he drew posters for an advertising campaign for the Shell oil company and won the Italian Golden Palm for advertising . Since then, Crepax has worked for various advertising agencies and magazines, including designing 200 covers for the medical journal Tempo Medico .

In the second edition of the comic magazine Linus he started the comic series Neutron , a superhero story , in 1965 . The main character, the art critic Philipp Rembrandt equipped with psychic abilities, was replaced by the reporter Valentina in the third episode. The Valentina series made Crepax internationally known. Her heroines Bianca and Anita followed . From 1973 Crepax devoted himself to the implementation of literary models such as the story of O , Justine , Emmanuelle and others. For the French non-fiction comic series La Découverte du Monde he contributed the volumes on Francis Drake and Charles Darwin . As a result, he mainly occupied himself with further adaptations, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was his last publication in 2002.

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Crepax mainly produced black and white drawings that are very much based on the elements of Pop Art , but develop their own visual language. He made use of image montage techniques known from films and adopted effects such as zoom and camera pans in his comics, and slow motion created by accumulating images. He often showed close-ups, divided his figures and showed details or body parts in individual images. For example, individual panels follow an item of clothing across the chest, stomach, pelvis and legs to the floor. The central motif of each panel is the item of clothing that is taken off; the body and the complete figure emerge only in the mind of the reader through the assembly of the individual images. In the volume Laterna Magica in 1979, Crepax completely dispensed with descriptive text and dialogues. It wasn't until 1980 that Valentina and Anita created colorful adventures.

The work of the bondage artist John Willie , whose knotting techniques can be found in some works, had a great influence on his work .

Comics by Guido Crepax were repeatedly indexed by the Federal Testing Office for Media Harmful to Young People. In 1983 this was done for Justine , in 1987 for Venus in Furs . A publication of Crepax's work in German is made considerably more difficult by this fact. For over ten years no publisher from Germany has dared to read the Italian's books.

Valentina

His most famous creation is the figure of the emancipated photo reporter Valentina, who Crepax created in 1965 based on the model of the actress Louise Brooks , whom he admired . With her light skin and dark pageboy cut , she served John Striebel as a template for the cartoon character Dixie Dugan in 1926 . Crepax exchanged letters with her in 1976 in which she was flattered by his portrayal.

Valentina shows nudity, clothing fetishism and bondage games in different narrative levels. In parallel, reality, dreams and memories are shown. The Valentina series became internationally known through Crepax's extraordinary drawing style, its strong graphic orientation to the style of the 60s, dream-like stories and its strong erotic content.

Bianca

The Bianca series tells of the sexual excesses of the 15-year-old boarding school student Bianca, who spins reality and fantasy together in her diary entries.

History of the O

In 1973 Crepax was commissioned by the French publisher Jean-Jacques Pauvert to adapt the story of the O. The comic version appeared in France and Italy in 1975, a signed and numbered edition in the format 52 × 36.5 cm, elaborately screen-printed, with prefaces by Roland Barthes and Alain Robbe-Grillet is considered the most expensive first print of a comic. The Story of O as amended by Crepax has also been published in the United States, Japan, and Brazil and is his best-selling book. In Germany, the comic as did the novel is Dominique Aury because of sadomasochistic content and explicit depictions of violence by the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons of the Index been set.

Publications

Valentina series

  • Valentina (1968), Milano Libri
  • Valentina speciale (1969), Milano Libri
  • Valentina con gli stivali (1970), Milano Libri
  • Baba Yaga (1971), Milano Libri, all'interno di Alì Baba Yaga
  • Ciao Valentina! (1972), Milano Libri
  • Valentina nella stufa (1973), Milano Libri
  • Diario di Valentina (1975), Milano Libri
  • A proposito di Valentina (1975), Quadragono Libri, edited by Francesco Casetti
  • Valentina in giallo (1976), Milano Libri
  • Valentina assassina (1977), Milano Libri
  • Ritratto di Valentina (1979), Milano Libri
  • Riflesso di Valentina (1979), Arnoldo Mondadori
  • Lanterna Magica (1979), Edizioni d'arte Angolare
  • Valentina pirata (1980), Milano Libri, color
  • Valentina sola (1981), Milano Libri, color
  • Valentina, Storia di una storia (1982), Olympia Press; after The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille
  • Per amore di Valentina (1983), Milano Libri
  • Io Valentina, la vita e le opere (1985), Milano Libri
  • Nessuno (1990), Milano Libri
  • Valentina e le altre (1991), Mondadori, collana Oscar
  • Valentina, la gazza ladra (1992), Rizzoli-Milano Libri
  • Valentina a Venezia (1992)
  • E Valentina va ... (1994), Rizzoli-Milano Libri
  • Al diavolo, Valentina (1996)
  • In arte… Valentina (2001), Lizard Edizioni after; The story of the eye by Georges Bataille
  • Valentina (2003), Panini Comics

Other heroines

  • La casa matta ( feat.Bianca , 1969), Edip
  • Anita, una storia possibile (1972), Persona / Ennio Ciscato Editore
  • Histoire d'O (1975), Franco Maria Ricci Editore, based on the novel History of O by Pauline Réage
  • Emmanuelle (1978), Olympia Press, based on the novel by Emmanuelle Arsan
  • Justine (1979), Olympia Press, based on the novel Justine or the Misfortune of Virtue by de Sade
  • Hello Anita! (1980) L'isola trovata, color
  • Belinda 1 & 2 (1983), Editori del Grifo
  • I viaggi di Bianca (1984), Milano Libri, inspired by the novel Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
  • Venere in pelliccia (1984), Olympia Press, inspired by the novel Venus in Pelz by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch .
  • Bianca 2. Odesseda (1987), Editori del Grifo
  • Emmanuelle l'antivergine (1990), Rizzoli
  • Eroine alla fine: Salomé (2000), Lizard Edizioni

Other work

  • Neutron (1965), Linus magazine
  • L'astronave pirata (1968), Rizzoli
  • Il dottor Jekill (1972), Persona / Ennio Ciscato Editore
  • Circuito interno (1977), Edizioni Tempo Medico
  • Casanova (1977), Franco Maria Ricci Editore
  • L'uomo di Pskov (1977), CEPIM (Sergio Bonelli Editore), color
  • L'uomo di Harlem (1979), CEPIM (Sergio Bonelli Editore)
  • La calata di Macsimiliano XXXVI (1984), Editori del Grifo
  • Conte Dracula (1987), Rizzoli-Milano Libri, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
  • Dr Jekyll e Mr.Hide (1987), Rizzoli-Milano Libri, based on the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson
  • Giro di vite (1989), Olympia Press, based on the novel The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
  • Nessuno (1990), Milano Libri
  • Le clinicommedie (1990), Editiemme
  • Il processo di Franz Kafka (1999), Piemme, based on the novel The Trial by Franz Kafka
  • Frankenstein (2002), Grifo Edizioni, based on the novel by Mary Shelley

German-language publications

  • Valentina (1970), Lukianos-Verlag, Bern
  • Bianca torturata (1971), HM Hieronimi Verlag, Bonn
  • Valentina and Bianca torturata (1975), two thousand and one, Frankfurt am Main
  • History of O (1977), Belrose Edition, Rotterdam
  • The Man From Harlem (1979), Taschen Comics, Verlag
  • Emmanuelle (1980), Bahia Verlag, Munich
  • Justine (1980), Editions Belrose, Rotterdam
  • Valentina in Stiefeln (1981), Bahia Verlag, Munich
  • Valentina im Ofen (1981), Bahia Verlag, Munich
  • Bianca (1982), Bahia Verlag, Munich
  • Hello, Anita (1982), Bahia Verlag, Munich
  • The story of O n.2 (1985), Blue Circle, Amsterdam
  • Venus in Fur (1986), Sombrero Verlag, Amsterdam
  • Justine (1992), Edition Erotik, Munich
  • Julia (1992), writer & reader, Munich
  • Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1996), Schreiber & Leser, Munich
  • Valentina in Pinstripe (1997), Schreiber & Reader, Munich
  • Valentina (2015), Avant, Berlin
  • Valentina Underground (2016) Avant, Berlin

literature

  • Vincenzo Mollica, Mauro Paganelli: Guido Crepax. Bahia Verlag: Munich 1981. (= The author and his comics Vol. 1) ISBN 3-922699-06-5
  • Paolo Caneppele, Günter Krenn: Film is comics. Elective affinities between two media, the projections of the film star Louise Brooks in comics from John Striebel to Guido Crepax. Filmarchiv Austria: Vienna 1999. ISBN 3-901932-03-8
  • Roland Seim : On the history of censorship - developments and selected examples , in Roland Seim, Josef Spiegel (ed.): "From 18" - censored, discussed, suppressed. Examples from the cultural history of the Federal Republic of Germany, Telos Verlag, Münster 2002, ISBN 3-933060-01-X

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Individual evidence

  1. Die Datenschlag-Chronik des Sadomasochismus ( Memento of the original of February 3, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. .  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.datenschlag.org
  2. ^ Review of Film ist Comics - Elective Affinities between Two Media. The projections of the film star Louise Brooks in comics from John Striebel to Guido Crepax.
  3. Caneppele / Krenn: Film is comics. P. 116, p. 200.
  4. Federal Gazette No. 244 of December 29, 2006.

Web links