5 works to get to know Manuele Fior

Here's why you should know more about one of the great Italian illustrators and cartoonists

An exhibition dedicated to lovers of Italian illustration and comics has opened its doors at the Bonvini 1909 exhibition space in Milan: Manuele Fior. Celestia. More than 40 plates and illustrations in tempera will be on display until 24 October, taken from the most recent graphic novel signed by the Cesena author.

Manuele Fior, born in 1975, is one of the great authors of contemporary Italian comics . His light line, synthetic in portraits and movements but detailed in composition and landscapes, is among the most distinctive on the graphic novel scene, thanks above all to his skill with traditional (and non-digital) colors such as tempera and acrylics. He was formed thanks to a traveling life, between Venice, Berlin, Oslo and Paris, and multiple experiences as an illustrator of record covers, magazines and novels; companion in adventure of Alessandro Baricco with the accompanying drawings of the column of My world in 50 books on La Repubblica; illustrator of children's books and posters for non-profit organizations such as Doctors Without Borders.

For those who still don't know him, here are 5 comic books to discover Manuele Fior.

1 Celestia

A graphic novel in two volumes, in which Fior's eclectic training, between a passion for superhero comics and architectural studies, is more evident than ever. In an unspecified future, the world was shocked by a mysterious invasion. Celestia is a small city in the lagoon, a desolate and disturbing Venice, which has isolated itself to survive.

Here Pierrot meets Dora; both are telepaths, linked by an ambivalent friendship. Their stray lives will take a new direction as they venture out into the outside world, discovering a society made up of lonely fortresses where children care for adults. A dystopian and ambitious comic novel (Oblomov, 2 volumes, 148 pp, 18 euros each).

2. Five thousand kilometers per second

From the futuristic atmospheres of Celestia we return to the most intimate and intimist of Fior, with a graphic novel that sums up twenty years of love in 140 illustrated plates in tempera.

Piero and Nicola are friends. They spend their summers as teenagers riding mopeds and thinking about women. Piero, the more shy, the clumsy, is the first but not the only one of the two to fall in love with Lucia, the beautiful daughter of the new neighbors. Life will push them in different directions, perhaps wrong, taking them five thousand kilometers away; Lucia in Norway, where she will find a new partner and lay the foundations for a different life; Piero in Egypt, where he will receive unexpected news.

From adolescent passion to maturity to the rediscovery of feelings when everything seems dormant, Five thousand kilometers per second is the story of a triangle not only of love, but also of perhaps above all of friendship (Coconino Press, 144 pp, 17 euros).

3. The variations of d'Orsay

Great art is a source of inspiration for Fior's tables in many of his works. The Viennese school, and then the Art Brut painters such as Aloise Corbaz, Augustin Lesage and Carlo Zinelli left a visible impression in the works of the cartoonist and illustrator.

In Le variations d'Orsay, Fior puts a naked his love for art by telling the hidden stories of the paintings and artists of one of the most important museums in Europe, even if not the most famous in Paris. The flowering of Impressionism, the controversies it aroused, the vision of artists such as Ingres, Rousseau, Degas become the subject of a walk through the halls and corridors of the Orsay museum. Fior takes the reader by the hand and leads him on a dreamlike journey through past, present, art (Coconino Press, 72 pp, 16 euros).

4. The interview

A story evocative that has its roots in the magical realism of Dino Buzzati, in which events and clichés of science fiction take shape in the province of Udine.

The tranquility of a town where nothing ever happens is disturbed by the first contact with a extraterrestrial civilization. Raniero, a psychologist in midlife crisis, and Dora, members of a community in favor of emotional and sexual liberation, share visions of flashes and triangles of light silhouetted in the sky.

Decades later, Dora has now 134 years. Humanity has faced a new beginning. It will be she, in the interview that gives the title to the graphic novel, to tell the events that led to the end of the old world (published in large format in a limited edition by Oblomov, 175 pp, € 17.50).

5. Miss Else

We are invisible spectators at the side of the young Else, scion of a respectable family ruined by her father's debts, in what begins as a peaceful day of vacation in the exclusive resort montana di San Martino, but it will soon take a dramatic turn.

After a relaxing game of tennis mainly engaged in trying to fend off the nagging advances of a suitor, Elsa finds a letter waiting for her in her room. Hidden behind a civil and respectable tone, her family makes a horrible request to her that will upset Else by plunging her into a dark vortex of desolation, revealed to the reader by the interior monologues that are gradually darker and more delusional.

A work finely psychological inspired by the short novel by Arthur Schnitzler and the portraits of the Viennese Secessionist painting (Coconino Press, 104 pp, 18 euros).