‘Hugo Pratt, Imaginary Geographies’.
Siena, Palazzo delle Papesse.
From 11 April to 19 October 2025.
From the seas of Corto Maltese to the lands of the great adventure novels: Hugo Pratt returns to Siena with a unique exhibition celebrating his visual and narrative universe among comics, watercolours, immersive projections and ethnographic objects. Forget the coordinates and follow the wind on a journey through Pratt’s imagery.
Twenty years ago, ten years after Hugo Pratt’s death, Siena dedicated a major retrospective to him. Today, the master of adventure returns to the Tuscan city with this new major exhibition set up in the entire recently renovated Palazzo delle Papesse, with an exhibition covering more than 1000 square metres starting from the courtyard, on the first and second floors up to the altana. Original panels, watercolours, sketches, serigraphies, large reproductions, ethnographic objects and multimedia projections become the stages of a journey that crosses seas and deserts, among characters that belong not only to paper, but to the collective memory of those who love stories, seven ideal doors to cross towards a labyrinth made of adventures, stories, cultural contaminations and artistic and literary influences.
Exhibition organised by Opera Laboratori and curated by Patrizia Zanotti and Patrick Amsellem, with design by architect Giovanni Mezzedimi.
Catalogue: Sillabe Editore in co-edition with Cong Edizioni.
Twenty years ago, ten years after Hugo Pratt’s death, Siena dedicated a major retrospective to him. Today, the master of adventure returns to the Tuscan city with this new major exhibition set up in the entire recently renovated Palazzo delle Papesse, with an exhibition covering more than 1000 square metres starting from the courtyard, on the first and second floors up to the altana. Original panels, watercolours, sketches, serigraphies, large reproductions, ethnographic objects and multimedia projections become the stages of a journey that crosses seas and deserts, among characters that belong not only to paper, but to the collective memory of those who love stories, seven ideal doors to cross towards a labyrinth made of adventures, stories, cultural contaminations and artistic and literary influences.
«1995–2025: Thirty years after Hugo Pratt died, reading or rereading his work is still a stimulating adventure, while admiring his work is an engaging experience, in fact almost a journey. The value of his draughtsmanship and the rich content of his stories as a whole, make him a great artist who personifies the best 20th-century culture. In this exhibition, we have endeavored to illustrate Pratt’s genius not only by displaying his celebrated strip cartoons and superb watercolors, but also by trying to recount this great draughtsman and storyteller’s origins and constant ceaseless development over time. It was in reading the comic strips of a master of the caliber of Milton Caniff that Pratt realized, while still a lad that, as Thierry Thomas put it in his work Hugo Pratt, trait pour trait, “drawing and storytelling, drawing and writing, are the same action because the gesture is the same”. This creative impulse was fueled throughout Pratt’s life by the powerful influence of the artists, intellectuals and poets who served as his (and, by extension, our) guides in a world made of fantastic journeys in the footsteps not just of Corto Maltese but of all his other heroes as well.»
Introduction by Patrizia Zanotti e Patrick Amsellem
‘HUGO PRATT, IMAGINARY GEOGRAPHIES’: THE EXHIBITION CATALOGUE
‘Hugo Pratt, Imaginary Geographies’ is the catalogue of the anthological exhibition on display in Siena, from 10 April to 19 October 2025. It is a journey through Hugo Pratt’s drawn literature, through seven doors of the imaginary: Corto Maltese and all the other stories and characters born in Pratt’s enchantment, the female protagonists, the cinematographic and pop art influences and the real and imaginary literary references in his work.
More than 330 colour and black and white pictures, watercolours, original plates, albums and period material. To close, the volume gives readers a complete Corto Maltese adventure, A Mid-Winter Morning’s Dream, with new colouring by Patrizia Zanotti.
Edition in three languages: Italian, French, English.
Sillabe Publisher / Cong Editions
Available from April 2025
€ 29,00
208 full-colour pages
ISBN : 978-88-3340-524-7
Women of adventure, who rewrite history in the name of freedom. Characters who move along blurred boundaries between history and fiction, between memory and dream.
The love of adventure cinema seen as a child, the cinematic rhythms stolen from Milton Caniff, the inspirations of pop art, silence as part of the story and the world in a line.
The literary references in his works include the African routes of The Scorpions of the Desert, the forests and frontiers of Wheeling, the wild Canada of Jesuit Joe, the South America of The Man from the Caribbean
