Francesco Tullio Altan (born 30 September 1942) is an Italian comics artist and satirist.

Biography

He was born in

Treviso Treviso ( , ; vec, Trevixo) is a city and '' comune'' in the Veneto region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Treviso and the municipality has 84,669 inhabitants (as of September 2017). Some 3,000 live within the Ven ...

, the son of

Friulan Friulian ( ) or Friulan (natively or ; it, friulano; de-AT, Furlanisch; sl, furlanščina) is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy. Friulian has around 600,000 speaker ...

anthropologist Carlo Tullio Altan. He studied at the

University IUAV of Venice A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...

, but halted his studies to work for cinema and TV as a scenographer and writer. In 1970 he moved to

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a ...

, where he created his first comics series for children, published in a local newspaper. In 1974 he began collaborating with Italian publishers. In 1974, for the comics magazine ''Linus'', he created Trino, an unprepared god who has to create the world. In 1975, the year he returned to Italy, Altan created one of his most famous characters, Pimpa, initially published in ''

Corriere dei Piccoli The ''Corriere dei Piccoli'' (Italian for "Courier of the Little Ones"), later nicknamed ''Corrierino'' ("Little Courier"), was a weekly magazine for children published in Italy from 1908 to 1995. It was the first Italian periodical to make a re ...

''. Pimpa, a female puppy with red polka dots, later became a cartoon for Italian television, under the direction of Enzo D'Alò. His other characters for adult readers include Cipputi, a communist industrial worker who was the subject of numerous daily panels for newspapers such as ''

L'Unità ''l'Unità'' (, lit. 'the Unity') was an Italian language, Italian newspaper, founded as the official newspaper of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) in 1924. It was supportive of that party's successor parties, the Democratic Party of the Left, ...

'' and ''

La Repubblica ''la Repubblica'' (; the Republic) is an Italian daily general-interest newspaper. It was founded in 1976 in Rome by Gruppo Editoriale L'Espresso (now known as GEDI Gruppo Editoriale) and led by Eugenio Scalfari, Carlo Caracciolo and Arnol ...

'', Christopher Columbus, Casanova and Franz (a parody of

St. Francis of Assisi Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, better known as Saint Francis of Assisi ( it, Francesco d'Assisi; – 3 October 1226), was a mystic Italian Catholic friar, founder of the Franciscans, and one of the most venerated figures in Christianit ...

). Altan's satirical panels were also published in magazines such as '' Panorama'' and, more recently, ''

L'Espresso ''L'Espresso'' () is an Italian weekly news magazine. It is one of the two most prominent Italian weeklies; the other is '' Panorama''. Since 2022 it has been published by BFC Media. History and profile One of Italy's foremost newsmagazines, ' ...

''.

External links

Pimpa official website
1942 births Living people People from Treviso Italian comics writers Italian comics artists La Repubblica people {{Europe-comics-creator-stub