Reporting of Federici Studies Center
We remember the 110th anniversary of the birth of the timeless Giovannino Guareschi (1° maggio 1908) with an article that talks about a very successful comic book series dedicated to the "small world" .
Giovannino was born on May 1st 1908 and I already am 50 which is no longer there. A portrait of the writer and a comic episode of the Peppone and Don Camillo saga.
Giovannino completes 110 years – and it's been gone for years 50. In fact, fate wanted the anti-communist and conservative (in the sense in which every solid Po Valley farmer is) Guareschi saw the light on May 1st 1908, in a house in the Parma area where local socialists were celebrating Labor Day, and died in the summer of 1968: the most controversial year of the last century.
comedian, designer, journalist, writer, Giovanni Guareschi is universally known for the Mondo Piccolo/Peppone saga & Don Camillo (translated into 80 languages), made even more immortal by the films of Gino Cervi and Fernandel; but in reality his talents led to numerous prestigious communication adventures: from collaborations to the widespread humorous periodical «Bertoldo» (before the war) to the long and pugnacious direction of «Candido» (immediately afterwards), from fiery journalistic-political battles – we remember those with Einaudi and De Gasperi – to film scripts, from the illustration of famous electoral posters to the writing of countless books and stories.
But an essential element of his character would be missing if the biography did not mention the two events that Giovannino was able to face with immense dignity: imprisonment as a military internee in Germany between 1943 and the 1945 and the year in prison he suffered in the mid-1950s after a controversial defamation case.
For the 110th anniversary of the birth and the 50th anniversary of the death of the great writer, numerous initiatives are planned in recent months, including the issuing of a stamp, an exhibition on «Guareschi, humor and faith" desired by the diocese of Parma, a day of studies at the Catholic University of Milan in October and – on May 1st – a “Literary Café” at the Guareschi House-Museum in Roncole Verdi, Busseto (Pr), in which the first reprint of «Doctor Mabuse» will be presented, comic created by Guareschi in 1937, and the new volume of the «Don Camillo comics» series born in 2010 and published by the publisher ReNoir. To date, the titles published are: 15, with more than 100 stories.
The publisher ReNoir has granted ad Avvenire.it a complete story, the episode 11 of the second volume of the series, from the title “Rivalry”, with texts by Davide Barzi and drawings by Elena Pianta. The cover is designed by Ennio Bufi. This episode is also found in the first Don Camillo film:
