“Hugo Pratt, Imaginary Geographies”, from 26 March to 14 June 2026 – Le Cadran, Liège.
Following its presentation in Siena, the solo exhibition dedicated to Hugo Pratt continues its European journey. Imaginary Geographies follows the same route, but from a different perspective.
Within the spaces of Le Cadran — a former railway station now converted into a cultural centre — the exhibition unfolds through a series of thematic sections, conceived as narrative gateways. Visitors are invited to chart their own course along a non-linear path, where the works engage in dialogue with one another and with the sources that inspired them.
HUGO PRATT IN LIÈGE
Following its presentation at the Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, the exhibition “Imaginary Geographies”, dedicated to Hugo Pratt, arrives in Liège at Le Cadran Expo,a cultural centre housed within a former railway station.
The project, curated by Patrizia Zanotti and Patrick Amsellem, retains the structure conceived for Siena while adapting to a new context, unfolding as a journey through the multiple geographies of Pratt’s work: real, literary and inner. The exhibition is structured into thematic clusters, conceived as “doors”, which explore the main strands of his work: travel, literature, history, his relationship with female figures, and the idea of freedom. An open structure that invites visitors to move among the works without a prescribed order.
THE EXHIBITION ROUTE
Among the works on display, certain figures and settings emerge as central to Pratt’s imagination: the women of adventure, who rewrite history in the name of freedom; characters moving along the shifting boundaries between history and fiction, memory and dream.
The exhibition also traces the visual and narrative influences that shaped his work: the rhythms of adventure cinema, the graphic language inherited from Milton Caniff, echoes of pop art, and the use of silence as an integral part of storytelling — together with the pursuit of a line capable of containing an entire world.
Literary references run throughout the exhibition, from the African routes of The Scorpions of the Desert, to the forests and frontiers of Wheeling, the Canadian wilderness of Jesuit Joe, and the South American settings of The Man from the Caribbean. These paths converge in the journeys of Corto Maltese, a modern Ulysses moving through myths and legends, tracing a personal map of the twentieth century.
Curators:
Patrizia Zanotti, CONG SA
Patrik Amsellem
Organisers:
Cong Sa
Opera Laboratori
Inventives
THE EXHIBITION SPACES
In Liège, the exhibition is hosted at Le Cadran, an iconic building within the former Liège-Carré railway station, temporarily converted into a cultural venue. As a place of departures, arrivals and crossings, it resonates with the world of Corto Maltese.
The architecture evokes travel and movement, and the visitor becomes a traveller, crossing continents and landscapes of the imagination.
Le Cadran, Rue de Bruxelles, 6, 4000 Liège
OPENING HOURS:
daily, from 10.00 to 18.00
The exhibition catalogue
“Hugo Pratt, Imaginary Geographies” is the catalogue of the retrospective exhibition held in Siena from 10 April to 19 October 2025 and republished as an adaptation for the exhibition in Liège. Over 330 colour and black-and-white photographs, watercolours, original plates, comic books and period material.
Published in three languages: Italian, French and English.
Some of the artworks on display at the La Cadran for the exhibition dedicated to Hugo Pratt ‘Imaginary Geographies’
