Franco Matticchio

Franco Matticchio is one of the best known and most appreciated illustrator on the Italian scene.

He begins in 1979 drawing  for the culture page of the Corriere della Sera. Later he collaborated, among others, with Linus, Linea d ‘Ombra, the Sunday of the Sole 24 Ore, Internazionale, Lo Straniero.

In the 1980s he created Mr. Jones, a blindfolded cat starring in a comic series of surreal stories. The feline Jones is one of the many animals that inhabit his worlds dense with lines, in which enigmatic and gloomy scenes alternate with unpredictable and ironic situations. Both when he draws on commission and when he gives free rein to his imagination, Matticchio always creates personal and intimate works that make his style unmistakable and manage to restore the flavor of the atmospheres of his declared masters: Roland Topor and René Magritte.

He is the storyboard for the cartoon of the opening credits of the film Il mostro by Roberto Benigni.  In December 1999 he has drawn the last cover of the second millennium for the New Yorker. In fact, Matticchio has drawn several covers and has done so for the most important Italian publishers (Einaudi, Rizzoli, Mondadori, Guanda), among which we point out, for stylistic graphic originality, the Garzanti series dedicated to the novels of Gadda and Scerbanenco .

For more than thirty years, he has embellished the pages of the Index of books of the month, a cultural monthly, of which since 2013 he has also designed the covers with his drawings.

Matticchio is also the author of several art books published by Nuages ​​(Via Cimabue, Sunset at home, The little fugitive) and has illustrated some books for children, including What animal are you? by Paola Mastrocola and, in 2006, Ti tirano le pietre (Gallucci), translating the well-known song by Ricky Gianco and Gian Pieretti into images. In the same year he published the collection of drawings Esercizi di stylus for Einaudi.

Matticchio’s entire comic production was republished by Rizzoli-Lizzard in two volumes, Jones and other dreams in 2016 and, the following year, Mr. Ahi and other troubles!

For Vanvere he has published Postal booklet, Postal booklet 2, Wrong animals, I lost the umbrella and the highly reviewed Animals wrong 3.

His works have been exhibited numerous times in various Italian cities (Turin, Milan, Varese) and one of his paintings was chosen for the 1968 – 2007 Italian Art exhibition (Milan, Palazzo Reale 9 July – 11 November 2007), curated by Vittorio Sgarbi.

In 2017 he inaugurated a solo exhibition at the Galerie Martel in Paris.