Mattotti, between voyages and confidences

The Italian artist proposes to us two atypical works published in the Threshold: a notebook of voyage in the jungle of Kampuchea and a notebook of sketch in the intimacy of a room…

The Italian of Paris

Lorenzo Mattotti was born in 1954. After studies of architecture in Venice, it is directed towards graphics. With the beginning of the year 1980, it founds with other draughtsmen who wish to renew the esthetics and the language of the cartoon, the Valvoline group. In 1984, it carries out Feux, a work which is regarded as an event in the world of the cartoon and who will gain many international prizes. During the years 1990, it illustrates books for children, of Pinocchio with Eugenio (Grand Prix of Bratislava 1993, one of the greatest distinctions of the edition youth.) While drawing many illustrations for American and European newspapers (Le Monde, Télérama, The New Yorker, Vanity, Release…), he also imagines albums of cartoons (Noise of the White frost (the Threshold), Caboto, the man with the window, Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde (Casterman)). If the work of Mattotti, with the wire of the books, evolves/moves in a constant worry of coherence, one finds there the eclecticism of an artist who chooses to explore new territories unceasingly. Mattotti continues its graphic and pictorial research, thus being essential like one of the great names of the contemporary illustration. The artist lives today in Paris.

With the meeting of the Khmer temples

Remember out of the ordinary carried out by the Géo magazine at the end of 2002: The cartoon leaves on a journey, the occasion for great names of the cartoon to sign superb reports with the four corners of the world. Lorenzo Mattotti took the road of Kampuchea to visit the exceptional site of the temple of Angkor. The editions of the Threshold have the good idea to propose to us, in the shape of an elegant notebook of voyage, the entirety of the drawings carried out on the spot by the Italian artist. For ressusciter the culture khmère, the draughtsman uses of many techniques: watercolour, pastel, charcoal, Indian ink… Between the stone carved by the man and the jungle carved by nature, Mattotti makes spout out these ruins of the glares luminous, orange, emerald… Hieratic Buddhas guide the reader who moults himself, with the wire of the pages, as a filled with wonder traveller.

The meeting of two beings

Between confidences, pressures and gestures of tenderness, Mattotti invites us in the room of a couple in love. In 77 drawings and without any word, the artist draws with the pencil the attitudes of two beings in their intimacy. The reader is done observant, contemplator of this collection which adopts a format with Italian… After this strolls in love, languorous but never voyeurist, comes the final interrogation. Where thus did the woman pass at the end of the work? Is part, leaving the man alone? Is it right alley to refresh itself with the bathroom before better returning? … These rapids sketches, sometimes simply outlined, are the faithful reproduction of a personal notebook of the author. A beautiful work.

Photograph of the author © Marc Carlot, 2001

Illustrations © Mattotti, the Threshold, extracted from:

• Lorenzo Mattotti, Angkor, coll Notebook of voyage, the Threshold
• Lorenzo Mattotti, the Room, the Threshold