Jacovitti stamp celebrating the 100th anniversary of his birth

Silvia by Beatrice Brandini

Italy has had many geniuses, one of these was the great comics author Benito Jacovitti.

Jacovitti Cocco Bill

The first author to create a grotesque, absurd, but no less magnificent and entertaining world. His best-known character was Cocco Bill, the gunslinger who drank chamomile, inspired by the ironic and comic comedies that made fun of films about the Far West, starring Ugo Tognazzi or Raimondo Vianello. “So I thought of making a story with the cowboy so violent that to calm down, instead of drinking whiskey, he orders chamomile, the exact opposite of what happens in traditional westerns. “ Benito Jacovitti.

A cartoon by Jacovitti

Since he was a child with a fervent imagination he had seen him build puppets with scissors, needle and thread for his younger brothers. At six years old he began drawing his first cartoons on the stone slabs that characterized the streets of Termoli, where he was born. He attended an art school in Florence where the nickname “Fishbone”, due to his emaciated appearance, would become his symbol and signature on all his tables.

Pinocchio illustrated by Benito Jacovitti

He worked for many newspapers (Il Brivido, Il Vittorioso, Il Corriere dei Piccoli, Il Corriere dei Ragazzi…) and for famous advertising campaigns, such as that of Eldorado ice creams with Cocco Bill, for Facis with Pecor Bill, the Maramio cat for the cheese Mio, Enel’s game of goose…

   

Cartoons by Jacovitti

I’m sorry that many of the new generations don’t know this extraordinary artist, partly for this reason my blog was born, for the desire to talk about extraordinary authors, not only in fashion, so in the absence of social media (in the space of time in which they lived ) and sometimes without a bit of luck, they didn’t reach everyone, and they didn’t have the mainstream fame they would have deserved.

   

Cartoons by Jacovitti

That name, Benito, probably didn’t help him; removed from the Corriere dei Ragazzi and subsequently from Linus, in which a far-sighted Oreste del Buono had welcomed and understood him, he will say that he was considered a fascist and boycotted by the editorial staff “I had made a criticism against the extremists of all those, while they wanted I would have left the barbs against the fascists and taken away the ones against the extra-left, he says in a book, instead, I had taken them both away!” Partisanship has always afflicted Italy, continues to do so, and this is very serious damage to culture. Oreste del Buono, a leftist man, unlike many, was an intelligent intellectual who did not judge his political colour, but his talent.

       

Jacovitti’s notebooks

Then in reality Jacovitti was not right-wing, he was simply a free man, not aligned with the only thought that dominated the culture of those years. Probably if he had been born in America he would have been the antagonist of Walt Disney or in Europe of Hergé, Tintin’s father. A man who spared no effort, who drew freely without the slightest plot. Graphic novels are very fashionable today, but many of these are faded attempts, attempts that don’t even remotely come close to Jacovitti’s genius.

A statue dedicated to Benito Jacovitti in his native Termoli

Some cartoons by Benito Jacovitti

He defined himself as a humorous craftsman, for us who loved him (thanks dad for introducing me to him as a little girl) he was the greatest creative anarchist that post-war Italy had. Fantastic, uncomfortable, joyful, irreverent, Jacovitti was all this and much more. 

   

Cartoons by Jacovitti

I still have my old diary, some books and Jacovitti’s notebooks, and every time I look at them they make me smile. I think that with his satire and his drawings he was not only ironic, but a true curator of the soul and mind.

       

Cartoons by Jacovitti

One hundred years after his birth, two major exhibitions celebrate him, one at Maxxi, the National Museum of 21st Century Arts in Rome, until 18 February 2024; the other at Macte, Museum of Contemporary Art in Termoli, until 25 February 2024. Thanks to her daughter, Silvia Jacovitti, who is carrying on her father’s immense creative legacy, it will be an opportunity to rediscover or admire him for his first time.

Good life to everyone!

Beatrice

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