Hugo Pratt's Imaginary Worlds Explored in Recanati Exhibition

The Museo Civico di Villa Colloredo Mels in Recanati hosts 'Da Ulisse a Corto Maltese, viaggio nell’immaginario di Hugo Pratt,' an exhibition running from August 25 to January 7, 2024, as part of the third Recanati Comics Festival. The show features over 60 original plates, films, and reproductions that trace the literary influences on Pratt's work, including his 1963 adaptation of Homer's Odyssey for Il Corriere dei piccoli. Pratt, born in Rimini in 1927 and died in Pully in 1995, considered the Odyssey a kaleidoscope of adventure novel situations. The exhibition connects his characters, especially Corto Maltese, to figures like La Perouse, Robert Louis Stevenson, Baron Corvo, William Shakespeare, Arthur Rimbaud, Parzival, Hermann Hesse, Moby Dick, Rasputin, Jack London, and Saint-Exupéry. It also highlights transatlantic literary references from Jorge Luis Borges, Robert Arlt, Leopoldo Lugones, James Oliver Curwood, Zane Grey, and Kenneth Roberts, who influenced Pratt's lifelong project 'Wheeling.' The venue, Villa Colloredo Mels, is a noble palace from the mid-18th century with medieval and Renaissance sections, housing the Museo Civico since 1998. Its collections include archaeology, medieval and Renaissance art, a Leopardi section with books and artifacts, and four major works by Lorenzo Lotto: the Polittico di San Domenico, Trasfigurazione, San Giacomo Maggiore, and Annunciazione.