Reality in a Detail. An interview with Beppe Madaudo

Beppe Madaudo was born in Palermo in 1950 and trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. In 1976, he published his first book, Watanka, with Rizzoli, which earned him the Golden Yellow Kid Award as Italy’s best illustrator. He continued his journey as a painter while periodically returning to comics. He created aquatint engravings for a book on Casanova, the comics Salomé and De Satyricon, and the Quadri di Divina Commedia series. He also collaborated with Hugo Pratt, Guido Crepax, Milo Manara, and Cinzia Leone on the first four issues of Corto Maltese. He has published with numerous publishing houses and worked as a contributor for Paese Sera, L’Espresso, and RAI. His works have been exhibited in solo and group shows both in Italy and abroad. He was included among the 87 most significant artists of the 20th century in the multimedia work Great 20th Century Artists.

Over the years, you’ve experimented with very different expressive registers (from comics to painting to sculpture...). How did you first approach art, and what guides your choice to engage with one artistic language over another?

I was just over three years old when my family moved from Palermo to Acireale, my father’s hometown, for a period of time. We stayed in a two-story house: my father, my mother, my sister Teresa—two years older than me—and I lived on the first floor, while an elderly couple lived upstairs. The man had been a natural sciences professor, and after retiring, he took on the task of drawing all the animals of the world: butterflies, fish, birds, mammals—nothing was left out. He would draw them and then bind the drawings into albums, protecting each one with wax paper.

When the professor returned from grocery shopping, he would tap his cane against our window, and I would follow him. He would climb the stairs as if I weren’t there, hand the groceries to his wife, and give her a kiss. Then he would sit at his desk and start drawing. “Storm eagle: Southern Mexico; wingspan two meters, two meters twenty; feeds on large game...” As he drew, he would describe what he was doing, and I would see this eagle emerge from the paper through his words and drawings. This went on for days, then months, until after a couple of years we returned to Palermo and said our goodbyes forever. In those moments, I understood what I would do: I would draw—I wanted to draw like him—and I would invent the stories behind my drawings.

I had a very clear idea, but in reality, I didn’t know how to do it. By then, I was twelve or thirteen, and all my attempts had failed. Then one day, the postman knocked on the door and delivered a huge box to my mother. It contained all the professor’s albums, which he had left to me in his will—my inheritance. To such a grand gesture, I absolutely owed a response. So I started drawing, and over time, I became the person who, in 1976, was awarded as Italy’s best illustrator (the Golden Yellow Kid Award for best Italian illustrator, Lucca Comics 1976, ed.). An entire journey born from this experience and this determination. How did I become good? I don’t know. Hard work, the desire to succeed. Some people are born extraordinarily gifted; I’m not one of them. I built my skills step by step, and that’s how I began doing what I would do for the rest of my life.

My work began with painting—it’s easier to paint because you give expression to what’s inside you and try to materialize it. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 1973 with a degree in scenography, and with two daughters in my life, I needed to earn a living and wanted to do so using my skills. So I started working on a graphic novel about Native Americans.

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