Dino Battaglia - Comic Artist Discovery

     The greatest tragedy of sequential art in America is the comic code authority that was enacted in 1954. This was government censorship at its worst, to assign an artistic medium to the children demography based on lies and to dictate material that shunned free speech. In comparison, Europe was exploring the art form in content that America would not and thus severely restricted European artists and comic content from reaching American audiences. One artist in particular that I recently discovered was Dino Battaglia.

     Dino Battaglia was an Italian artist and a friend of Hugo Pratt, who is known in America as the creator of Corto Maltese. But unlike Hugo, Dino was more interested in adapted novels and non fiction material for most of his career. His brush strokes were expressive, leading to natural form and depth that illustrated the world in a cohesive form but also in a minimalist sense that still left enough for the reader to embellish the details for themselves.

      It was a tragedy that Dino Battaglia's life was cut short at the age of 60 in 1983, but I feel the greatest harm of his legacy is that comics are still considered a medium of fictional stories and thus a good portion of his work, some consider his greatest work, of adapting classic novels and biographies are not substantially recognized or available in America, even though he was the winner of Best Foreign Artist award at the Angoulême Festival in 1975.