On the occasion of celebrations to mark the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, the Italian Cultural Institute in Pretoria, along with the Italian Embassy in Pretoria, the Italian Consulate General in Johannesburg, and the Dante Alighieri Society in Johannesburg have organised an exhibition on 23 November 2021 entitled “And so we went out to see the text clouds again: Dante in Comics”. This is a creative experience – set up by MaMa Comics and Alberto Brambilla – that shows how Dante’s work has also inspired Italian comics. The exhibition will be held on the premises of the Dante Alighieri Society in Johannesburg.
The “Divine Comedy” has provided a lot of inspiration for paintings, literary works, films, video games, and many comics. Over the last hundred years, numerous Italian comic strips have been based on the most famous poem to come out of Italy.
Some of the comic strips chosen for this exhibition are didactic, designed to provide an enjoyable aside to school work; others are humorous or satirical, and poke fun at the great poet, or they use his images to smile about contemporary society; yet others are adventurous and plunge the protagonists into the horrors of Dante’s inferno. Each author, from the most serious to the most humorous, has recounted Dante’s trip through the hereafter, using images and various stories. Dante and Virgil, devils and the dammed, Beatrix and Paradise, appear in all the comic strips. And they are always different.
Among other works, visitors will be able to enjoy “Ruination in comedy” by Benito Jacovitti, one of the most important Italian humoristic comic writers, and the famous Disney-like story “Mickey Mouse’s Inferno” by Guido Martina and Angelo Boiletto. Then again: there is the amusing “Divine Comedy” in comic strip form by Marcello Toninelli, who revisits the original work with didactic attention, and the humorous stories by Adriano Carnevali for La Contea di Colbrino; the futuristic inferno by Nathan Never, the popular series by Sergio Bonelli Publishers, and the hellish adventure experienced by Cattivik, the humorous petty thief created by Bonvi, and also recounted by Moreno Burattini and Giogio Sommacal.
MaMa Comics is made up of Maria-Angela Silleni and Maya Quaianni, experts in the area of comic strips and visual communication. Maria-Angela works at the publisher as the editor, translator, and freelance article writer; Maya sees to communication and academic research into comic strips in Italy and Spain.
Alberto Brambilla is an associate with the comic strip information and culture website, Fumettologica.it and from 2011 to 2019 he organised the WOW Spazio Fumetto exhibitions, the comic strip museum in Milan, which includes the “Dante what a legend” exhibition. (2015).
The exhibition will be introduced by Sonia Fanucchi, a lecturer at Johannesburg’s Witwatersrand University.
