Hugo Pratt

Graphic novelist Hugo Pratt (15/06/1927 - 20/08/1995) was born in Rimini, Italy, in 1927, with grandparents from England, France, Turkey, and Spain. Aged 10 he went to Ethiopia, where his father was serving in the Italian army. Pratt returned to Italy, to Venice, in 1943, when his father was captured by the British army in Ethiopia and never seen again by his family. Pratt later moved to Argentina, where his children were born. He returned to Italy in 1963 when Argentina experienced an economic crisis. He began illustrating myths for the children's magazine, Corriere dei Piccoli. Florenzo Ivaldi then offered to back him financially to work on further creations. He developed the comic book Sergeant Kirk and, in 1967, Sergeant Kirk featured the character that would make Hugo Pratt famous, Corto Maltese. He moved to France in 1970 and developed the Corto Maltese character further within his own series. Pratt later returned to Italy, and continued publishing Corto Maltese stories until the final one, Mu, in 1989. The term "drawn literature" was coined to describe Pratt's work, which raised the level of what was thought possible in graphic story-telling. He moved to Switzerland in 1984 and died there in 1995.

Sources:

Bio at cortomaltese.com (accessed: September 9, 2019)

Corto Maltese Series at penguinrandomhouse.com (accessed: September 9, 2019)

Bio prepared by Sonya Nevin, University of Roehampton, sonya.nevin@roehampton.ac.uk

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Records in database:

• Corto Maltese. The Golden House of Samarkand (Corto Maltese, 7)

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