Valentina: three decades of Milan through the eyes of an icon

at Palazzo Guinigi.
Opening on Saturday 3 October.
From 4 to 27 October: Tuesday to Saturday 3pm–7pm, Sunday 10am–1pm and 3pm–7pm.
From 28 October to 1 November: 9am–7pm.
Closed on Mondays.

In the mid-1960s, a sudden surge of Italian creativity allowed the European comic strip to develop. Linus (1965), Crepax’s Valentina (1966), Pratt’s Corto Maltese (1967), Buzzelli’s La rivolta dei racchi (1967) and Buzzati’s Poem Strip (1969): In close dialogue with France and long open to American influences, Italian comics were arguably the most vibrant and innovative in the world during that crucial decade. 

In this burst of creativity, Valentina served as a probe launched by the comic strip towards other cultural constellations. Cinema, fashion, contemporary art, photography, literature, music, and of course comics. Everything became part of the rich dialogue that, through Valentina, Guido Crepax wove with the most cutting-edge international culture. 
Whilst Valentina was then both an antenna and a key player in a lively cultural dialogue, today she is an incredible time capsule, capable of offering a snapshot, perhaps the most complete and multifaceted possible, of a historical period so rich in every respect that a comparison with the present day risks proving merciless. 

Through a careful selection of panels, most of which have never been seen in person in recent times, the exhibition aims to recapture the spirit of the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s in Milan, a time and place which, in Crepax’s illustrations and through Valentina’s eyes, find their most illuminating representation. The exhibition has been organised in collaboration with the Crepax Archive.