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Pinacotheque de Paris Opens Hugo Pratt Imaginary Journey

The Pinacothèque de Paris is showing from March 17 through August 21, 2011, an exhibition of works by Hugo Pratt. Thanks to this vast retrospective, the public can discover the breadth of the talent of the creator of Corto Maltese.

This exhibition wil show over 150 watercolors, most of them little known by the broad public,as well as historical images, more specifically the whole of the 164 plates of the mythical Ballade de la mer salée. Since the retrospective in the Grand Palais in 1986 it is the first time that Paris has put on an exhibition devoted to the oeuvre of this exceptional artist, regarded as the inventor of the literary comic strip.

Hugo Pratt’s own life is a genuine novel, characterized by a genealogy combining various cultures. His life and his work were influenced by his literacy culture – Robert Louis Stevenson, Joseph Conrad, Herman Melville, Jack London, Ernest Hemingway as well as Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, to whom he devoted an album at the end of his life : Le Dernier Vol – as well as by his travels to the four corners of the planet.

In 1967, after a journey to the Caribbean, Hugo Pratt created La Ballade de la mer salée, which was the first appearance of Corto Maltese. It was a genuine revolution in the ninth art: never before had the art of the author and the art of the storyteller been united in that manner.

Image: Hugo Pratt, ”Corto Maltese – La jeunesse” 1985

www.pinacotheque.com

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