Italian illustrator and artist Lorenzo Mattotti is, for the seventh consecutive year, the creative designer of the image for the official poster, which depicts an Elephant in the Lagoon, and for the sixth year, of the opening sequence for the Venice International Film Festival of La Biennale di Venezia, this year in its 81st edition (August 28 – 7 September, 2024).
Lorenzo Mattotti writes: “What is an elephant doing in the Lagoon? It is certainly an unu-sual, unexpected image, but it takes us back in memory to when, many years ago, an elephant arrived in Venice and wandered around the narrow Venetian streets during a fa-mous Biennale Carnival in 1981…
This Elephant now crosses the Lagoon and travels the paths of Fantasy, Mystery and Magic that are discovered in Cinema. He himself is a Memory and also the History of Cinema: a party, a parade, a show!
And this specially-coloured Elephant also reminds us of the Exotic, the Faraway, the East, a look towards other civilisations, other cultures…
At the Venice Mostra other worlds, other languages, other fantasies have always met, and have been arriving in the Lagoon for 92 years. An Elephant that goes towards the East, but which has the ability to welcome everyone.”
Lorenzo Mattotti lives and works in Paris. He began his career in the late 1970s as a comic artist and in the early 1980s founded the Valvoline group with other illustrators. In 1984 he created Fuochi, which was greeted as an event in the world of comic art, and won im-portant international awards. In cinema, he collaborated in 2004 on Eros by Wong Kar-Wai, Soderbergh and Antonioni, and was responsible for the presentation segments of each episode. He was a creative consultant for Pinocchio by Enzo D’Alò.
In Incidenti, Si-gnor Spartaco, Doctor Nefasto, L’uomo alla finestra and many more books, all the way to Stigmate published in Italy by Einaudi, Mattotti’s work has evolved following an extremely consistent line. Today his books have been translated around the world. He publishes in newspapers and magazines such as The New Yorker, Le Monde, Das Magazin, Suddeutsche Zeitung, Le Nouvel Observateur, Corriere della Sera and Repubblica. He has illustrated many books for children including Pinocchio and Eugenio, which won the Grand Prix in Bratislava in 1993. He has held many solo exhibitions including an anthological exhibition at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome, at the Frans Hals museum in Haarlem and at the Musei di Porta Romana. He creates posters, covers, advertising campaigns and is the author of the Cannes 2000 poster and the posters for the Estate Romana festival.
In May 2019, he presented to great acclaim in the Un certain regard section of the Cannes Film Festival, his first animated feature-length film as author and director, entitled La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia (The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily) inspired by the fable by Dino Buzzati. From September 2023 to January 2024, the Lorenzo Mattotti. Stories, rhythms, movements exhibition was held in Brescia, at the Santa Giulia Museum. Currently, original drawings by the artist are on display at the major exhibition on the masters of comics at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, entitled La BD à tous les étages.
