'Reflections'.
The Italian comic creator and illustrator Marco Corona is difficult to pin down. His work shifts between traditional illustration to experimental visual storytelling. Often inspired by classic painters or literature, his graphic novels form an erratic mix of depraved human behavior, veiled autobiography and complex fragmented narratives. Works like 'Bestiario Padano' (2003) and 'Benemerenze di Satana' (2018) are disturbing and dreamlike stories of sexual obsessions and violence. 'In Mezzo L'Atlantico' (2005) and 'La Seconda Volta Che Ho Visto Roma' (2013) are partially autobiographical travel journeys, characterized by symbolic connections and stream-like thoughts. His best-known works are perhaps his graphic novels about Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, 'Frida Kahlo - Una Biografia Surreale' (1998) and 'Krazy Kahlo' (2016).
Life and career
Marco Corona was born in 1967 in Carmagnola in North West Italy, not far from Turin. His father worked as a mechanic, his mother was a housekeeper. Among his graphic and narrative influences are George Herriman, Andrea Pazienza, Tove Jansson, Dino Buzzati, Jack Kirby, Charles Burns and Robert Crumb.
Since the 1990s, Corona has been active as an illustrator, working for publishing houses Giunti Editore and Giangiacomo Feltrinelli Editore. His short comic stories and illustrations have appeared in magazines like Blue, ANIMAls, Internazionale, Il Male Fridgidaire, Decorder, Schizzo, Interzona, Canicola and Stampa Alternativa. In October 1998, Corona debuted with the comic book 'Cadavre Exquis', created in collaboration with Gianluco Viano and published in the 'Schizzo Presenta' series of the Andrea Pazienza Comics Center. The cover references Edvard Munch's painting 'Puberty'. With the French publishers Rackham and Le Dernier Cri, Marco Corona has released screen-printed art books like '1998' (Rackham, 2001) and '32 Coups de Toux' (Le Dernier Cri, 2001). Éditions Rackham has also released some of his graphic novels in French.
'Frida Kahlo - Una Biografia Surreale' (1998).
Frida Kahlo graphic novels
In his graphic novels, Marco Corona has regularly referred to 20th-century painters, most notably the Mexican surrealist Frida Kahlo. In 1998, Corona's debut graphic novel was fully devoted to her, but by far not a chronological account. Under the title 'Frida Kahlo - Una Biografia Surreale' (Stampa Alternativa, 1998, later reprinted by Black Velvet, 2006), Corona offered a surreal exploration of her life, largely fuelled by the author's personal connection to her. Like Kahlo, Corona has had experiences with chronic pain, and through her experiences, he could capture the suffering in a visual narrative. In 2016, he made another work about the painter, titled 'Krazy Kahlo' (001 Edizioni, 2016). A combination between reprint and reboot, Corona used some of his older comics pages from the 2006 version, but added new pages, mostly with better artwork and more focus on Kahlo's hardships with her husband and her personal physical pain. The book sold very well in the Spanish-language world and was translated into French, as well as English as 'Frida Kahlo, an Illustrated Life'. Other artists who made graphic novels about Frida Kahlo have been Gilbert Hernandez' 'Frida' (available in 'Amor y Cohetes: The Love & Rockets', Fantagraphics, 2007) and 'Strange Like Me, Frida Kahlo' by Gavin Aung Than in his 'Zen Pencils' series.
'Bestiario Padano'.
Bestiario Padano
Since 2003, most of Marco Corona's graphic novels have appeared through Coconino Press, the Bologna-based alternative comics imprint of the Italian cartoonist Igort. Corona's graphic novel 'Bestiario Padano' ("Bestiary of the Po Valley", 2003) is a disturbing depiction of rural life, full of grotesque faces, gore and fantasy, with the mysterious disappearance of a woman leading to investigations outside of Earth's realms. Graphically, Corona took inspiration from the self-portraits of the early 20th-century painter Antonio Ligabue. All his characters have the same penetrating gaze, and seem to be looking straight at the reader.
'La Seconda Volta che ho visto Roma'.
Augmented travel journals
In 2005, Corona released 'In Mezzo L'Atlantico' ("In Between, the Atlantic"), a semi-autobiographical travel diary of the time the author spent with his girlfriend in Colombia and Bogotá. Even though the book is a personal recollection of real events, the author confuses the reader by stating that the book is not autobiographical, and perhaps not even a story, and that everything, including the setting, is fake. His next travelog, 'La Seconda Volta che Ho Visto Roma' ("The Second Time I Saw Rome", Rizzoli Lizard, 2013) tells the story of the artist's hitchhiking trip to see the rock band Marlene Kuntz, but is also an emotional report about Rome itself. Corona explorers the city's turbulent history and draws parallels with the present day.
Riflessi
With the three volumes of 'Riflessi' (Coconino Press, 2006-2007), Corona also found his way to the North-American market. Translated by Kim Thompson under the title 'Reflections', the books were also released by Fantagraphics. A reflection of the concept of time and growing older, the book tells the story of Miranda in several phases of her life. As narrator, an elderly Miranda receives postcards from her brother, who was once seriously ill, but now travels the globe. The message brings up memories to their past, which harbors the secret why the brother and sister followed very specific life paths.
'L'Ombra di Walt'.
L'Ombra di Walt
Another multi-volume project by Corona was 'L'Ombra di Walt' ("The Shadow of Walt", Cococino Press, 2008). It follows an anthropomorphic dog called Walt, who works as a painter during the Great Depression. He is tormented by his artistic ideals and the harsh reality of his troubled past and hopeless financial situation. In a reference to Walt Disney, Corona's characters have animal heads that seem to become some kind of masks. Interviewed by Paola Bristot on www.stripburger.com, Corona explained: "They were created as a counterpart to the great American economic crisis; they have completely lost their original features (in their appearance as well as their behavior) and are condemned to a life in this world, lost forever and irrevocably introverted. (...) The characters function without the knowledge of the higher purpose and reason, like we all do in fact. Past can be reassessed or relived, that's true, but such consciousness is false, deceptive and cannot be altered - the past reveals to be a sort of an artificial limb. Decline reigns over everything, so restoration is inconceivable." A second volume of this graphic novel project appeared in 2009 under the title 'Il Mercato Nero'.
Benemerenze Satana
In 2018, Marco Corona released 'Benemerenze Satana' ("Satana's Merits", Hollow Press), a graphic novel many years in the making. Around 2007, its prologue was serialized in Canicola and other chapters appeared in Blue magazine. The work is based on a 1974 book by a now forgotten writer, the civil servant Domenico Vaiti. A journal written as a novel, Viati wrote about his impotence during sleepless nights and how he tried coping with it through psychoanalysis, scientific research and artistic creations.
Since Corona could find so little information about Vaiti, it left much room for creative liberties. Much of Vaiti's obsessions tended to be quite repetitive too, so Corona selected the most appropriate passages and divided them into 13 short stories, each done in a different graphic style. Vaiti himself is depicted as a man plagued by inner voices and astral entities, which haunt him day and night. Some bully him and confront him with his troubled past. Others try to guide him to redemption. He imagines himself to be a hermaphrodite. During his lifetime, he subsequently joins the Fascist and the Communist movements, and eventually makes a deal with the Devil.
'Il Viaggio'.
Human emotions
Most of Marco Corona's graphic novels are visual explorations of human emotions. With 'La Galaverna' (001 Edizioni, 2018), he made a journey of grief. In a village in the snowy Alps, Margherita, a young woman raised by nuns, crosses the forest with an ax in her hand to save her child. At an open place in the forest the orphan daughters of refugees like Margherita are preparing a mysterious magical pagan ritual. Three years later, Corona's book 'Il Viaggio' (Progretto Stigma, 2021) was a dreamlike exploration of childish and childlike terrors. The graphic novel is set in an abandoned old house, once prestigious, now in bad shape. Junks and playing children are the only current visitors. Years ago, the daughter of count Levis disappeared without a trace, while his little brother (who appears to be a ghost) befriends a group of local children. Nobody is prepared for the horrible, hallucinatory fantasy world they are about to enter.
Comic art by Marco Corona.
Graphic contributions and illustrations
In 1999, Marco Corona found international exposure when he was included in the massive 'Comix 2000' anthology by the French publishing house L'Association. In November 2016, a two-page comic story by Marco Corona about the life of novelist Jack London was published in La Lettura, an insert of the newspaper La Corriere della Sera. In 2015, Corona illustrated Carlo Collodi's children's classic 'Pinocchio' (Rizzoli Lizard, 2015). He also illustrated Susanna Mattiangeli's children's book 'Los Números Felices' (Édebé, 2019). For Coconino's collection Fumetti nei Musei ("Comics in Museum"), Marco Corona created the installment 'La Visita' (2021), a story set in the Palazzo Massimo, one of the four locations of the National Roman Museum.
Style
In every project, the eclectic Marco Corona tries to use a different graphic and narrative approach. And even though he seems to vary in genres and themes with every book, Marco Corona's work is deeply personal in nature. Through his experimentation, he plays with the minds of his readers, for instance by telling his stories in a fragmented style, or denying the obvious, like his dismissive approach to autobiographical work. In a May 2023 essay on the website of The Comics Journal, Matteo Gaspari explored the mystery of Marco Corona by analyzing his major books. In his conclusion, Gaspari states that "maybe Marco Corona is not trying to tell stories - not in the prosaic sense. Maybe he's trying to capture emotional states of being: traumatized; obsessed; paranoid; depressed; nostalgic; suffering. States of being are atemporal in his stories; they don't need chronology to work, they refuse causality and rationality and linearity."
Recognition
In 2002, Marco Corona won an award at the Comicon in Naples. Between 24 November and 18 December 2016, his work was exhibited at the Pinacoteca Nazionale during the BilBOIBul festival in Bologna. Corona's drawings have also been exhibited in Treviso, the Leoncavallo in Milan and the Biennale in Turin.
Self-portrait of the artist, appearing at the end of 'Benemerenze Satana'.