Corto Maltese print on canvas - The Ballad of the Salty Sea - 65 x 65 cm

Hugo Pratt

Flamboyant, insatiable traveler, seducer between two suitcases, erudite thinker, convinced Freemason, captivating writer, master of black and white and genius watercolorist, Hugo Pratt was all this and much more...
But between legend and fabrication, there is always something mysterious about him, forever undefined; just like Corto, his Maltese sailor with endless legs, an English cap, and the classiest frock coat in the Merchant Navy!

Hugo Pratt's story begins in Remini, on the Adriatic coast, on June 15, 1927. A cosmopolitan childhood in Venice, which he wonderfully drew in the 1980s. Of diverse ascents, Pratt would never be the man of one city, not even of one country! He is a traveler, a devourer of landscapes, a man who feeds his future memory so that it may feed his imagination in return! At the age of 10, young Hugo leaves with his mother to join his father, an Italian fascist military officer and anti-Mason, based in Abyssinia (Ethiopia), an Italian province since 1935.
From the desert landscapes of this distant land, the iconography of the sailor would later be profoundly enriched.

After the arrival of the English troops, he witnesses the triumphant return of Emperor Haile Selassie to Addis Ababa where the Italian troops are defeated. His father, captured by the British, dies in 1942.
Confined with his mother in the prisoner camp of Dirédaoua, he begins to read American comics. They are repatriated by the Red Cross to Italy, occupied by German troops, in 1943.
The years at the end of the war were recounted in multiple ways by Pratt himself... Let's say he participates in the history being written, perhaps among a defeated army, perhaps among the victors...

It is in 1945 that he embarks on the adventure of drawing. His early years are marked by the influence of comics (L'As de Pique - L'Asso de Picche). Sometimes also a screenwriter, he draws and travels, storing new images...
In 1949, noticed by an Argentine publisher, he settles in Buenos Aires. "Juglemen" and "Ernie Pike" are remarkable works of this period. Nevertheless, he continues to move, between London, Sao Paulo, and Argentina, which he leaves in 1962 to return to Italy.

In Venice, he draws new stories of the masked avenger, adapts the work of Robert Stevenson ("Treasure Island"), and continues to "escape" regularly to find that freedom without which he suffocates.
In 1967, it is in a new magazine "Sergent Kirk" that Pratt publishes the first pages of an adventure written and drawn by himself: "Una ballata del mare salato - La Ballade de la mer salée." Among the secondary characters appears for the first time Corto, who will make his fortune and his fame.

At the end of 1969, he meets the editor of Pif Gadget, moves to Paris, and decides to make Corto Maltese, this imaginary alter ego, a traveler like him, mysterious, detached, enigmatic, his hero! It is in April 1970 that Pif sees the first adventures of the Maltese. But too adult, too literary, too libertarian, Pif's audience does not adhere to Pratt's character. It is France Soir, from 1973 to 1974, that will publish the first complete adventure: "La Ballade de la Mer salée."

Republished, in the form of comics, on sale in bookstores, published by the magazine Tintin, Corto imposes himself! A comic book for adults, taking a look at the history of the early 20th century (from 1904 to 1925), taking his hero from the shores of Hong Kong to the Venice of Freemasons, from Antigua to Siberia...
Pratt uses his travels, but also his own view of life, to nourish his double. He makes him an observer, ironic and egocentric, fascinating in his detachment, seductive in his ability to engulf History and pursue his own...

Awarded at the 3rd Angoulême Festival, "La Ballade de la Mer salée," although being the first adventure of Corto published, will be, chronologically, the second, since in the early 1980s, Pratt will write "La Jeunesse," which takes place 10 years earlier (1904-1905). It is worth noting that the 29th adventure of Corto Mû takes place in 1925. It is, chronologically, the latest in the 20th century, yet it is two years before Pratt himself was born, as if, through his declared double, Pratt also wanted to invent a substitute father for himself, he who was not very proud of his own!

The 1980s are Pratt's triumphant years. President Mitterrand did not hesitate to mention Corto among his favorite imaginary heroes. Pratt, on the other hand, settled in Switzerland in 1984, while continuing to travel the world; mainly South America and the Pacific in this period.
In 1995, he published "Le dernier vol," on the last moments of Saint-Exupery. Ill for many months, he passed away on August 20, 1995, at the age of 68, leaving behind a unique mythology and a full life where concessions to "normal" life (family, job, and others) were never really part of it...

Natacha PELLETIER for PASSION ESTAMPES

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