International Cartoonists Exhibition

The tradition & historical record

The International Cartoonists Exhibition, known familiarly as Rapalloonia, is an annual comics festival held in Rapallo, Liguria, Italy. Founded in 1972, Rapalloonia is one of the oldest Italian exhibitions devoted to comics. Conceived in order to popularize and increase the importance of work done by comic authors, it was the first exhibition of its kind to display original artwork. It is one of the few comics festivals to have been founded and always directed by professional authors of the field — Carlo Chendi, Luciano Bottaro, and Giorgio Rebuffi. Other collaborators include the restaurateur Fausto Oneto, the artistic director Giovanni Nahmias and the association president Daniele Busnelli Since 1993, the festival has awarded U Giancu's Prize, given to a selection of accomplished comics creators. Rapalloonia has not only been held in Rapallo, having traveled over the years and collaborated with other comics festivals in other places. The exhibition has twice moved to the site of Lucca Comics & Games and has collaborated with Strisce d'Africa ("Comic Strips of Africa"), dedicated to the European and American cartoons stories set in Africa and to those created by indigenous authors. The show has also collaborated in Venice with Venezia nel Fumetto ("Venice in comics"). For each exhibition, Rapalloonia produces catalogs/monographic publications based on that year's theme. ¹

Associazione Culturale Rapalloonia is a cultural association which pursues the promotion of comics, cartoons and related art forms, through channels of information and culture. The arms of Rapalloonia! were designed by the musician and actor Luigi Maio. Carlo Chendi, one of the association's founders, became honorary president in 2014, succeeded as president by Davide Caci. Rapalloonia! works with partners to promote comics as a form of expression and means of communication. Some of these non-profit organizations include Comune di Rapallo, Regione Liguria, Provincia di Genova and UNICEF. ¹

The International Cartoonists Exhibition was formed by Carlo Chendi (1933–2021), an Italian cartoonist and Disney Italy screenwriter, and the cartoonists Luciano Bottaro (1931–2006) and Giorgio Rebuffi (1928–2014), who founded Studio Bierreci. It was originally dedicated to two main categories: cartoonists and readers. The aim of the festival was to show how a comic page is born, illuminating the processes by which pictures are drawn by hand before being photographed and downsized, ready for print. The first exhibition, in 1972, showed the work of cartoonists from eight different countries. As with the 1973 show, no particular theme was selected for exhibition. The 1974 exhibition, however, was given to the subject of women in comics, both as main characters and as authors. This show was an enormous success, drawing attention from the mass media. Special guests Oriana Fallaci and Natalia Aspesi wrote articles in their respective newspapers, and RAI (Italy's national public broadcasting company) reported on the exhibition on national television. Later shows continued similarly, with various themes being chosen for the exhibition. One was dedicated to Corriere dei Piccoli; two to publishing house (Edizioni Alpe and Edizioni Bianconi), two to Cristoforo Colombo; three to comic schools: the Connecticut School (Mort Walker, Dik Browne and many others) and to Italian schools Strisce di Terra ("Strips of Earth") and Strisce di Mare ("Strips of the Sea"); one to the cartoon heroes of the western world; one to satire; one to the topic of Christmas, made in Milan and Rapallo, connected to fundraising for the charity Francesca Rava N.P.H. ¹

Exhibitions over the years have had different themes: below are the most appreciated and remembered editions: ¹

2005 The 33rd edition of Rappoloonia was dedicated to Carl Barks: international guests included the Carl Barks Fan Club and Don Rosa, the natural heir of Barks. ¹

2006 The 34th edition was held in November 2006, and it had as theme Comics Schools, in which the main Italian and foreign comics schools participated. ¹

2010 The 38th edition, held from September 25 to October 10, 2010, was dedicated to women in comics. The focus was on the fictional criminologist Julia Kendall, created by Giancarlo Berardi, creator of the famous Ken Parker. Julia, who aesthetically resembles Audrey Hepburn, lives and works in Garden City, a fictional American metropolis. She is a criminology teacher at Hollyhock University but often assists the police with investigations that require her expertise. Given the importance of the theme, a debate on women was organized, including a lesson on stalkers, a real issue affecting women. For the first time, the Rapalloonia Prize was awarded to someone outside the comics world: Alessandra Bucci, the deputy superintendent of state police and head of the Homicide police headquarters in Genoa, for her parallel life with Julia. ¹

2011 The 39th edition, held from October 1 to 16, 2011, was marked by a sad event: the death of Sergio Bonelli shortly before the exhibition. Bonelli was the editor of Dylan Dog and Tex Willer from 1986, originally created by his father, Gian Luigi Bonelli. This edition also paid tribute to Sergio Cofferati, former secretary of CGIL and current MEP, with a contribution to his literature. ¹

The annual awarding of U Giancu's Prize is closely tied to the International Cartoonists Exhibition, taking place on the same day as the exhibition's opening, though in a different location (the U Giancu restaurant). Cartoonists, authors, comedians, editors, actors, and fans gather for a big dinner at U Giancu, which resembles a cartoon museum. Every year, they eat, drink, laugh, draw, and chat late into the night, celebrating the U Giancu Prize. U Giancu's Prize was created in the autumn of 1992. The name "U Giancu" comes from the restaurant where several people had gathered that night: Fausto Oneto, the owner of the restaurant U Giancu; his wife; Italian comics creator Luciano Bottaro; Bottaro's friend Piero Campana, who had historically assisted at the restaurant; and Claudio Bertieri. During their gathering, Bertieri proposed the idea of celebrating their mutual friend, the cartoonist Antonio Canale, who had died a few months earlier. They contacted Emanuele Luzzati, an Italian animator and illustrator, and asked him to create a small statue. Luzzati created The White Pulcinella, which became the symbol of the prize. (The term "U Giancu" is Genoese dialect for "the white.") To complete the work, Oneto decided to have the statue placed in an elegant olive wooden box. In the beginning, the prize was given only to a realistic/adventure artist and to a humor artist: the first prize-winners were Aurelio Galleppini and Francesco Tullio Altan. When Chendi returned to Rapallo in 1996, he asked Oneto to associate the Prize with the exhibition, to move the famous cartoonists dinner from Wednesday to Saturday, and to also award a prize to a scriptwriter. ¹

L'Albo D'oro di U Giancu [U G… ¹

The text above is adapted from the Wikipedia article “International Cartoonists Exhibition”, available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 licence. ¹

International Cartoonists Exhibition is Italian comics festival, according to the structured record cited below. This entry was generated automatically from that record and has not yet been reviewed by a person familiar with the tradition. ²

The source record links this tradition to 1 external register, which can be verified through the citation. ²