Vittorio Giardino

Vittorio Giardino is one of Italy's most important comics artists, known for his Clear Line inspired series like 'Max Fridman' and 'Jonas Fink'. The Italian electrical engineer Vittorio Giardino was already in his thirties when he entered the comics scene in 1978. After creating his first comics for La Città Futura, he created the character 'Sam Pezzo', a private investigator whose adventures appeared in Il Mago and Orient-Express. In 1982, after three books, he left the character to work on the complicated espionage stories of 'Max Fridman', also in Orient-Express. In addition, Giardino set up a series of short stories featuring 'Little Ego', a female and erotic version of Winsor McCay's 'Little Nemo', in Glamour International and Comic Art. From 1986, he was present in L'Espresso with short stories, and began working as an illustrator for L'Unità, Glamour International, La Repubblica and Je Bouquine. Giardino's work also found its way to France, and his three main series appeared in the pages of Circus. His short stories for L'Espresso where collected in the book 'Vacances Fatales' by Casterman upon their reprints in À Suivre. For the same magazine, he made 'Piero, les Rêves, le Temps', an homage to Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca, in 1992. A year later, he began the series 'Jonas Fink' in the Il Griffo journal, a series set in former Czechoslovakia during the Communist regime.