Me again, Valentina

This article is published in number 13 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until March 29, 2022

A woman with a thousand faces, Guido Crepax’s Valentina is ready to leave the past behind to enter a present made up of modern instances and digital flashes. Worthy of an influencer: «An influencer of the soul, one capable of making strong choices in the field. What then were the choices of daddy “, specifies Antonio Crepax, one of the three children of the great master of comics, who passed away in 2003.

Graduated in architecture, Guido Crepax began his career as an illustrator of vinyl covers. Soon noticed by the world of advertising, he signs some prestigious campaigns that become a sort of training ground for his design: «Valentina was part of him, a witness of his time. But this does not mean that she is no longer in line with the woman of today, quite the contrary ». What is particularly fascinating is the fact that Valentina was one of the few female protagonists in the world of comics to have aged with her author. “First of all from an emotional point of view,” continues Antonio. “The recklessness of an adventurer gives way to reflection, brooding, even repentance.” In this, he adds, Valentina is a modern woman, aware: «When she should have started the process that would have led him to age her heroin, she manifested multiple sclerosis, which then led to her death. The disease inevitably made her sign more rigid, and her softness thus began to disappear: he had already decided that Valentina would grow old, but how and with what trait she decided destiny ».

In addition to this choice, against the tide in a world that fears the sign of time, Caterina Crepax – Antonio’s sister – is keen to claim an aspect that is sometimes criticized: eroticism, which envelops the photographer’s daily life as well as the other Crepax creatures such as Belinda, Bianca, Anita. “Compared to Manara, of whom our father has always been a friend and admirer, the body is less carnal. The nude was functional, it represented female freedom. It was his way of asking us to abandon the superstructures, the impositions. He hated hypocrisy, censorship. He would have been scandalized by the censorship of nipples on Instagram, if she had lived long enough to see social media ». So many factors that she, she explains, bring the iconic character into the present: «The personal story of Zerocalcare it reminded me a lot, in its introspective key, of our father’s relationship with Valentina. The success of the Netflix series Tear off along the edges you hate Bad comics it shows us that people want to read and see stories close to them ».

Valentina also represented for Crepax the possibility of escaping from oneself. Courageous, traveler, she was the opposite of her creator of her: «She hunts herself in dangerous situations, she is curious, she never stands still. He, shy, during the interviews defined himself as “a boring person”. However, through her character he told very intimate aspects, for example our mother as a young man had suffered from anorexia, and so did Valentina ». Fans remember another source of inspiration: in Valentina intrepidfrom 1971, the protagonist is moved while, with her mother, she watches the film Lulu with Louise Brooks. Back home, in front of her mirror, she puts on her makeup and cuts her hair like the actress she has decided to imitate. But to give her a date of birth, some clothes and a lot of experience was another Luisa, Crepax’s wife. Let’s look at the identity card: Valentina Rosselli, photographer, one meter and 72 tall, was born in Milan on 25 December 1942 and lives at 45 via De Amicis, which is the Crepax home address. «I was born in the year in which Valentina had a child. To draw the childhood of Valentina’s partner, Philip Rembrandt, my father used the photographs of Antonio as a child. And as a child Valentina has the features of my sister Caterina », adds Giacomo Crepax, her third brother. From the study, he explains, the great author rarely came out. Like Salgari, he defined himself as a “motionless traveler”: “The Prague of Antonio’s honeymoon enters a story, some houses I photographed during a holiday in Holland appear in The fake Kandinsky“. In short, the relationship between reality and comics, for Crepax, has always been bi-univocal, they were physically part of it, in private: «This is why it was quite natural for us to continue this story by telling it in our own way, with the Crepax Archive. It is not an interpretation, but an attempt to grasp and tell nuances that only we know, continuing in a direction that has already been taken ».

Created by family members in 2003 just after his death, the Crepax Archive aims to protect and keep alive the rich heritage of images and contents resulting from the work of the master of comics. The father’s cultural heritage has been carried forward, respecting the original work, thanks to exhibitions and events, new editions, multimedia projects and design objects. This last trend is well known to his admirers: as in any house of the Milanese bourgeoisie of the time, pieces appear in Valentina’s life cult like a sofa by Le Corbusier, a lounge chair by Charles and Ray Eames, the great Arch by Achille Castiglioni. But Guido Crepax also takes this passion out of the pages: here is the birth of the screen covered with drawings made for the Rinascente in 1968 (which inspired a version in corrugated paper made by Baleri) or the silk scarves, with large colored subjects, launched with the stylist Biki in 1967. From these suggestions come, more recent: the storage table designed by Folco Orlandini and Andrea Radice for the Brazilian company Schuster Móveis & Design, the cabinet sold in New York by Moss, the Illulian carpet and, lastly arrived, a jewelry collection by designer Lora Nikolova curated by Caterina Crepax.

Another great legacy is the seventh art. In the creative universe of Crepax – who has also worked for theater, cinema and television – the big screen and comics come together both in the homage to the most beloved directors (from Truffaut to Kubrick) and in the use of cartoon sequences that they recall cinematic storyboards, including close-ups, long shots and details full of dynamism. «In the past, there were also some experiments, a film and a TV series dedicated to Valentina; in the end, however, we can say that Guido Crepax has given a lot to the cinema but the cinema has never reciprocated too much. Also for this reason, for some time we have been exploring the possibility of creating a new television project. We have had many expressions of interest and this could be the year of a series on Valentina, perhaps even animated ». To insist that the iconic helmet live fully in the present, explains Antonio, are the last generations of the family, alongside the young members of the team and university students who, in recent years, have dedicated entire theses to the production of the famous designer: “Now they are pushing us to enter the NFT market. And, I must say, we are seriously considering doing it, ”he concludes.

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