VALENTINA

Valentina was born in 1965 from one of the most brilliant and innovative cartoonists in the history of comics: Guido Crepax, a successful graphic designer and illustrator, who died on 31 July 2003 in Milan at the age of 70. The first publication of Valentina appeared in the monthly magazine "Linus" and it was titled "The Lesmo curve". Actually, the initial protagonist of that story was Philip Rembrandt, Alias neutron, an amateur investigator art critic, endowed with particular psychic powers, which allowed him to paralyze with his gaze, any individual or any machine, this ability was due to his kinship with the knights of the abyss, a blind population who lived underground at a depth of 20.000 metres. Philip Rembrandt is engaged to Valentina Rosselli, a beautiful and sensual photographer characterized by a black bob and resembling the silent film actress Louise Brooks.

Very soon Valentina thanks to his charisma and success with the public, he undermines the protagonist Philip Rembrandt, earning the leading role in all the following stories. What is most striking about this character, who is clearly aimed at an adult audience, are her dream journeys, full of surrealist symbology, a masterpiece of psychological introspection, which often and willingly see her trespassing into the world of eros. But what distinguishes the graphic originality of the comic Guido Crepax it is precisely the style of the shots and the arrangement of the cartoons within the table, which increase its expressive power, always functional to the story and which contributes, for example, to amplifying the dynamism of a movement, or to highlighting a detail, or to communicate a feeling through a symbolic image, which the reader will have to codify in a personal way. All this makes us understand how comics are not a subordinate art to cinema or cartoons, for the simple reason that this narrative charm is unrepeatable with any other art. In Valentina's graphic style we can find many references to art nouveau painters, such as Gustav Klimt or to the expressionist cinema of Ejzen�tejn or Ingmar Bergman.

Valentina distinguishes itself from all the other comic book characters in that, like all human beings, it ages, in fact in its latest story, created in 1995, Valentina turns 53 and marks his exit from the world of comics with the episode entitled "To hell with Valentina!". Valentina it also landed in a series of 13 telefilms broadcast in Italy, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, which had the beautiful Demetra Hampton as the leading actress. Among the most famous stories of Valentina we remember in addition to La curva di Lesmo, I sotterranei, Marianna goes to the countryside, Baba Yaga, The false Kandinsky, Moore's syndrome

A Guido Crepax deserves the credit for having created other comic masterpieces such as the comic translation of the classics of horror literature such as "Dracula","Jekyll","The process" is "Frankenstein", while for the series" A man, an adventure "he created the splendid"The man from Pskov"about the Russian revolution and"The man from Harlem"on jazz. In addition to Valentina, Guido Crepax has conceived and drawn other female characters all equally attractive and sensual, such as Belinda in 1967, Anita in 1971 and Bianca in 1968, which the same author considers to be his most successful character.

Valentina is Copyright © Guido Crepax and those entitled to it and are used here for information and dissemination purposes.