The first masters of comics at Palazzo Bisaccioni, the unique exhibition chronicles the beginnings of a phenomenon that later became a mass in 50 rarely seen original works.

JESI – The history of comics is also and above all the history of its recognition as an art form. Today, this process of emphasizing has been accomplished, as evidenced by entire sections of bookshops devoted to graphic novels, the proliferation of genre stores, galleries, and the presence, in the public imagination, of characters born and raised in various strips. The authors, then translated into animated films and cinematic remasters.

art explosion

Comics, as a specific manifestation of man’s natural willingness to tell stories in pictures, took shape between the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in the United States, thanks to the spread of the daily press as a mass phenomenon. exhibition”The art sector .. dreams and realism in the early masters of comedy‘, which opens today at 5:30 p.m. in the halls of Palazzo Bisaccioni in Jesi, illustrates its beginnings, through some fifty original works – some for the first time on public display – by great North American authors, from the early 1940s to the early 1940s. The exhibition, curated by Alessio Trappcini and Giovanni Nahamias, in coordination with Roberto Gigli, is a traveling project, the result of a collaboration between the Casa di Risparmio dei Jesse Foundation, and the Academy of Comics, Creativity and the Visual Arts of Jesse and Pav! Pordenone.

Aesthetic stimuli

“Being able to watch the originals is beautiful and exciting, because it allows you to understand the graphic work of the artists, clever and accurate, also taking into account that there is at least one tape per day that is required for newspapers,” Trabchini explains. “This exhibition reveals how, in its inception, comics was an already fully formed art, whose authors were susceptible to the aesthetic stimuli of the time and able to reflect society around them, creating ways of escape into imaginary worlds,” continues the curator. Indeed, there are many influences of art deco, artistic avant-garde, and freedom, and there are countless references to social and political customs and events. The exhibition’s subtitle – Dreams and Realism in the Early Masters of Comics – sums up some of its meaning, namely that comics, which the public still regards not as an art form, but as entertainment, represents an escape from reality. Through graphic, adventurous and fascinating stories that inevitably describe (American) society, the bourgeoisie, the immigrant, and the lower class. Among the authors on display are three pioneers: Winsor McCay of Little Nemo in Slumberland, Frank King of Gasoline Alley – an endlessly fascinating novel, where characters advance day in and day out for nearly a century – and George Harriman of Crazy Cat. In addition to one of the first Mickey Mouse segments, there is also the work of Primo Carneira, the Italian-born American boxer who, with the help of a cartoonist, designed a series titled Primo Dreams. The exhibition can be visited until November 20, daily from 9:30 to 13 and from 15:30 to 19:30.