Andrea Pazienza - They Don’t Always Die

Following the major exhibition at MAXXI L’Aquila, the MAXXI museum is hosting the second chapter of the project dedicated to the brilliant talent of Andrea Pazienza, with the aim of presenting as comprehensive a picture as possible of the complexity and significance of the “father” of Italian underground comics, on the 70th anniversary of his birth.

The exhibition’s title is taken from a lengthy interview the author gave to British presenter Clive Griffiths in 1988, shortly before his death: a phrase chosen to highlight the relevance and vitality of the artist’s legacy, comprising timeless masterworks that continue to speak to the hearts of the public. The exhibition covers Andrea Pazienza’s entire career, from his formative years to his final works: a sequence of rooms arranged around a central core animated by texts, illustrations and painterly drawings, including the monumental mural created live during the Comics Fair in Naples in 1987, presented here for the first time.

The more than five hundred comic strips on display depict the faces of his most famous characters (Pentothal, the high school student Zanardi, Pertini and Pompeo, Pazienza’s artistic legacy), accompanied by minor characters who make up a unique, tender yet fierce cross-section of humanity. Pencil sketches, studies, improvisations and performances on large surfaces interact with notes, poems, private letters and prose of all kinds. A vast selection of archival material, including photographs, films and audio recordings, reconstructs the creative and non-conformist environment in which the works came into being.

Cover: Campofame (plate 3), 1987, Courtesy of a private collection (detail)