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Comics by Antonio Rubino for the Corriere dei Piccoli, circa 1910–1955 Italy
Antonio Rubino, "Quadratino" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1910, panel
This is my fourth post—with many more in the works—on the great Italian illustrator Antonio Rubino (1880–1964). The scans come from Antonio Rubino: Gli anni del Corriere dei Piccoli (Black Velvet Editrice, 2009), which focuses on Rubino's comics for the Corriere dei Piccoli, a children's supplement to a big daily Italian newspaper.
Here are some links:
—post at Lambiek.com
—Comics from Coconino-World.com
—In the Nursery of Good and Evil
—kid's room decorated by Rubino
Antonio Rubino, "Quadratino" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1910
Italo Calvino, from the "Visibility" chapter of Six Memos for the Next Millennium
In my own development, I was already a child of the ‘civilization of images,’ even if this was still in its infancy and a far cry from the inflations of today. Let us say that I am a product of an intermediate period, when the colored illustrations that were our childhood companions, in books, weekly magazines, and toys, were very important to us. I think that being born during that period [Calvino was born in 1923] made a profound mark on my development. My imaginary world was first influenced by the illustrations in Corriere dei Piccoli, the most widely circulated weekly for children. I am speaking of my life between three and thirteen years of age, before a passion for the cinema became an absolute obsession, one that lasted all through my adolescence. In fact I believe that the really vital time was between three and six, before I learned to read.
In Italy in the twenties the Corriere dei piccoli used to publish the best-known American comic strips of the time: Happy Hooligan, the Katzenjammer Kids, Felix the Cat, Maggie and Jiggs, all of them rebaptized with Italian names. And there were also Italian comic strips, some of them of excellent quality, according to the graphic taste and style of the period…I used to live with this little magazine, which my mother had begun buying and collecting even before I was born and had bound into volumes year by year. I would spend hours following the cartoons of each series from one issue to another, while in my mind I told myself the stories, interpreting the scenes in different ways—I produced variants, put together the single episodes into a story of broader scope, thought out and isolated and then connected the recurring elements in each series, mixing up one series with another, and invented new series in which the secondary characters became protagonists. […] Reading the pictures without words was certainly a schooling in fable-making, in stylization, in the composition of the image.
Antonio Rubino, "Quadratino" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1910, panel
Antonio Rubino, "Pino e Pina" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1910
Antonio Rubino, "Pino e Pina" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1926
Antonio Rubino, "Pino e Pina" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1926, panels
Antonio Rubino, "Piombino e Abetino" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1917
Antonio Rubino, "Piombino e Abetino" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1917
Antonio Rubino, "La Tradotta" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1918
Most of the "La Tradotta" comics are double-page spreads (but just a single image like the above) and impossible to scan without damaging the book. They are damn cool, though.
Antonio Rubino, "Caro e Cora" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1919
Antonio Rubino, "Lio e Dado" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1934
2/17/2014 update: Udo wrote to explain about the above and below images: "These are obviously comics depicting the Italian fascist youth organization 'Opera Nazionale Balilla' (links one & two)."
Antonio Rubino, "Lio e Dado" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1934
When Rubino returned to Corriere dei Piccoli late in life, his work had pushed even further into eye-popping proto-psychedelia:
Antonio Rubino, "Dino Din e Din Dinora" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1955
Antonio Rubino, "Dino Din e Din Dinora" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1955
Antonio Rubino, "Dino Din e Din Dinora" comic, Corriere dei Piccoli, 1956
This post first appeared on February 13, 2014 on 50 Watts
