Biography
Born in Basel in 1916, to an Italian father, Pietro Giovannetti, fromMax the Marmot and the cartoon production
Giovannetti started to work as a draughtsman producing materials for the British satirical magazine '' Punch''. There he published different comic book characters’ stories. In 1951, his first book ''Das betrunkene Eichhorn'', signed as Pericle Giovannetti, was published by the Vineta Verlag publishing house. In 1952, he produced an illustrated children's book for the Swiss Union of Free Trade Unions as a Christmas gift. In 1953, Giovannetti created Max the Marmot, the main character of the homonymous comic strips with no texts, for all ages, which brought him international fame: the cartoon character soon became popular, especially in Europe, the United States and Japan. The book ''Max'' was reprinted in 25 editions between 1954 and 2004, the reprints of Giovannetti's various works continued over the years and until 2015, when Creative Media Partners published ''Max Presents Portraits, Sketches, Vignettes, and Pictorial Memoranda of Men, Women, and Other Animals''. In 1958 Giovannetti wrote, in collaboration with Clive King, the volume Hamid of Aleppo and he also produced the illustrations. His work as an illustrator was released by the New York-based publisherLuigi Pericle
In 1959 Giovannetti, signing himself Luigi Pericle, began a collaboration with Peter G. Staechelin, an art collector from Basel, who acquired several of the artist's works for his own collection. In 1962, Giovannetti met Martin Summers, gallery owner and curator at the Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery in London, where the painter held two solo exhibitions, in 1962 and 1965, and two group exhibitions – Colour, Form and Texture and Contrasts in Taste II – both in 1964. In 1963, some works were also exhibited in Ascona at the Castelnuovo Art Gallery. Giovannetti met Hans Hess, museologist and curator of the York Art Gallery. In 1965, Hess organized an itinerant solo exhibition, displaying a selection of 50 works, in several British museums, including: York, Newcastle, Hull, Bristol, Cardiff and Leicester. In January 1965, Herbert Read – art critic, co-founder of the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and artistic consultant for Peggy Guggenheim – visited Pericle's studio in Ascona. Later, he curated the second solo exhibition of Luigi Pericle's work in London and wrote the preface to the catalogue that would afterwards be included in the book ''Luigi Pericle: dipinti e disegni'' (Luigi Pericle: paintings and drawings). From the 1960s to the 1980s, the artist produced a series of works on canvas and masonite, inks and drawings. During this period, the ''Luigi Pericle: dipinti e disegni'' (Luigi Pericle, paintings and drawings) catalogue was printed: the project of a monograph devoted to the artist was initiated in collaboration with Staechelin and, after the latter's death, was completed with his son, Ruedi Staechelin. The paintings by Luigi Pericle are now part of the Municipal Collection of Ascona, the permanent collection of the Bristol Museum & Art Gallery in Bristol and the permanent collection of the York Art Gallery Museum in York. Since the end of 2018, further research carried out by the Luigi Pericle Archive resulted in the rediscovery of the artist and the exhibition that took place at theComic books and illustrated books
*(DE) ''Aus meiner Menagerie'' Nebelspalter-Verlag, 1951 *''L'unione fa la forza : strenna natalizia per i piccini'', Unione Svizzera dei sindacati liberi, 1952 *(DE) ''Das betrunkene Eichhorn'', Vineta-Verl, 1951 *(EN) ''Max'', MacMillan Company, 1954 **(DE) ''Max,'' Zurigo, Sanssouci, 1954 ***''Max,'' Baldini e Castoldi, 1959 ****(EN) ''Max'', Atheneum, 1977, *****(FR) ''Max'', Ecole des loisirs, 2003, *(EN) ''Max Presents: Portraits, Sketches, Vignettes and Pictorial Memoranda of Men, Women and Other Animals; Conceived by Max, Supervised by Max, Selected by Max, Arranged and Edited by Max, Commentary by Max'', Macmillan (N.Y.), 1956 **(EN) ''Max Presents Portraits, Sketches, Vignettes, and Pictorial Memoranda of Men, Women, and Other Animals'', HardPress Publishing, 2013, ***(EN) ''Max Presents Portraits, Sketches, Vignettes, and Pictorial Memoranda of Men, Women, and Other Animals'', Creative Media Partners, LLC, 8 August 2015, . *(EN) ''Beware of the Dog'', Macmillan, 1958. *(EN) Clive King e Giovannetti, ''Hamid of Aleppo,'' MacMillan Company, 1958 *(EN) ''Nothing But Max'', MacMillan Company, 1959 *(EN) Birds without words, MacMillan Company, 1961 *(EN) ''The Penguin Max'', Penguin, 1962 *(DE) ''Jawassinüdsäged!'' Nebelspalter-Verlag, 1971 *(DE) ''Max: d. Murmeltier, über d. d. Welt schmunzelt'', Heyne, 1973, **''Max - Das Murmeltie''r, 1981 *(DE) ''111 neue Kaminfeuergeschichten'', Nebelspalter-Verlag, 1975 *(DE) ''Pablo,'' Nebelspalter-Verlag, 1976 *(DE) ''Ja - wer chunt dänn daa?'' Nebelspalter-Verlag, 1976 *(DE) ''Max : alle Abenteuer des Murmeltiers, über das die Welt schmunzelt'', Heyne, 1993References
Bibliography
Luigi Pericle, ''Luigi Pericle: dipinti e disegni'', Roma, Romagraf, 1979. Distributed by Istituto Geografico de Agostini (Catalogue) Chiara Gatti, ''Luigi Pericle: Beyond the visible'', Cinisello Balsamo, Silvana Editoriale 2019 ()External links