Guido Crepax in Brescia: to see a 50 -year story – Brescia – Arte.it

Brescia – The career of Guido Crepax is organized in Brescia, in the Santa Giulia Museum, with a philological path that covers fifty years and embraces 150 works, some of which are never exhibited.
Bozzetti, drawings, advertising projects, storyboard of films, covers of records and board games tell the artist in De Ronde, who has had to deal with various cultural areas, from advertising to cinema, from theater to television.

From 30 September to 15 February, Brescia Musei Foundation, in collaboration with the Crepax archive, houses the most varied anthological anthological so far ever made at work. Alberto Fiz and Iharia Bignotti, with the collaboration of Camilla Remondina, take care of the path entitled Guido Crepax. Dreams, games, Valentina. 1953-2003A compelling journey set up by studio-top tag, enriched by several crossed references, including colors, words, images, audio-video devices, light games and shadows, silhouettes and swing.

The seven thematic sections do not neglect the importance that literature and art have exercised about the language of Guido Crepax. Descending inspiration from the great classics, Valentina’s “father” cultivated various literary genres, from horror to science fiction, from the historian to the heroes, as evidenced by his tables and even before the youth works dedicated to Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka and Edgar Allan Poe.

Game of Marco Polo (made for the launch of the Volkswagen Polo), 1977, color print on paper, 70 x 50 cm; © Crepax Archive

There is no shortage of explicit winks of art history in his works, such as in the first comic strip that appeared on “Linus” in 1965, where Valentina visits the frescoes of Masolino da Panicalal in Castiglione Olona. Or again, in history False Kandinsky from 1991 where Valentina always immerses itself in the atmospheres of the master of abstraction and Moore’s syndrome From 1990 he comes to Dialogue with the sculptures of Henry Moore.

The exhibition celebrates the attention that Crepax has devoted to the psychological and dreamy aspects of reality, and then to the theater, to television, to the cinema, an inexhaustible source of inspiration, as evidenced by the references to the films and directors who are in his stripes, from Truffaut to Kubick Van Fishconti.

Last but not least, the music, with which Crepax had a family bond. In forty years, from 1953 to 1993, Crepax designed more than 300 record covers, a precious selection of which is scenically exposed in Brescia. Among the women of Crepax Parade Anita, Bianca, Belinda or Effi, able to represent the evolution of the role of women and its complexity from the second half of the 1960s to the new millennium. And the inevitable Valentina, alter ego of his author, the only character of his comics whose birth has been drawn.

Manifesto for the liberation movement of women, the 1970s, printing offset on paper, 64 x 94 cm; © Crepax Archive

The exhibition also reconstructs the literary triangle that gives this figure life: on the one hand his wife Luisa, on the other hand the fascination for the American actress Diva of Silent Cinema, Louise Brooks. The route ends with a series of works that manifest the interest of Crepax in the fashion world and the costume, followed by him in the decades by reading magazines such as “Elle” and “Vogue”, looking at the windows of the Milanese boutiques or rumbling in his wife Luisa’s closet.
In 1985 on the occasion of changes, Crepax Valentina designed the leaders of the great Italian stylists from the 1980s and three years later, in the comic The fashion -DreamBianca and Valentina repeat the striking phases of Italian fashion, while he is in Double dream. Looking for lost clothing From 1994, Crepax Valentina brings Mandelli, Aka Krizia together with the stylist Mariuccia.