Eugenio Colonnese ( Fuscaldo, September 3rd, 1929 -

Santo André Santo ('saint' in various languages) may refer to: People * Santo (given name) * Santo (surname) * El Santo, Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta (1917–1984), Mexican wrestler and actor * Bob Santo or Santo, stage name of Ghanaian comedian John Evans Kwadwo ...

, August 8th, 2008) was an Italian-born

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

ian

comic artist A cartoonist is a visual artist who specializes in both drawing and writing cartoons (individual images) or comics (sequential images). Cartoonists differ from comics writers or comic book illustrators in that they produce both the literary and g ...

. Son of a Brazilian mother (who is African, Portuguese and Indigenous) and Italian father, Colonnese moved to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

as a child, where he began his career in 1949, working for several Argentine magazines. He moved to Brazil in 1964. Three years later, he created the Estúdio D-Arte with

Rodolfo Zalla Rodolfo Zalla (Buenos Aires, July 20, 1931 - São Paulo, June 19th, 2016) was an Argentine comics artist. He started drawing comics while still in Argentina in 1953, but his career gained prominence after moving to Brazil with fellow comic artist ...

, with whom he produced several comic books for several Brazilian publishers. In 1967, Colonnese created his main characters: Mirza, a Mulher-Vampira ("Mirza, the Vampire Woman") and O Morto do Pântano ("The Swamp Dead"), which, although they have similarities, respectively, to

Vampirella Vampirella () is a fictional vampire superheroine created by Forrest J Ackerman and comic book artist Trina Robbins in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror comics magazine ''Vampirella'' #1 (Sept. 1969), a sister publication of '' Cre ...

and

Swamp Thing The Swamp Thing is a superhero in American comic books published by DC Comics. A humanoid/plant elemental creature, created by writer Len Wein and artist Bernie Wrightson, the Swamp Thing has had several humanoid or monster incarnations in v ...

, were created some years before these characters.Colonnese worked mainly with horror comics, but he also worked with other genres and did illustration for educational and advertising comics. In 1985, he was awarded the

Prêmio Angelo Agostini for Master of National Comics Master of National Comics ( pt-BR, Mestre do Quadrinho Nacional) is one of the categories of Prêmio Angelo Agostini, the most traditional Brazilian award dedicated to comics that has been held since 1985 by Associação dos Quadrinhistas e Caric ...

, an award that aims to honor artists who have dedicated themselves to

Brazilian comics Brazilian comics (known in Brazilian Portuguese as ''HQs, gibis, revistinhas, historietas'', ''quadrinhos'' or ''tirinhas'') started in the 19th century, adopting a satirical style known as cartoon, charges or caricature that would later be cemen ...

for at least 25 years.

References

Brazilian comics artists Italian comics artists Prêmio Angelo Agostini winners Brazilian erotic artists Film poster artists Brazilian art educators 1929 births 2008 deaths {{LatAm-comics-creator-stub