Ettore Viola

Forty Years of Portraits and Illustrations

RECORDING HISTORY FOR LA REPUBBLICA, IL MESSAGGERO AND LA STAMPA

The faces of an era’s great personalities in the pages
of Italy’s daily newspapers

We know the names of the great poets, scientists, artists, philosophers and writers, sometimes we even know their works, but seldom do we know their faces. Ettore Viola, cartoonist, illustrator and indeed journalist — after all his accounting of the times and personalities appeared in newspapers — fills this iconographic void by giving us the faces (drawn in pencil and traced with ink) and binding them to names and human stories.

Viola worked in ‘real time’ for several decades for Italy’s most important dailies, maintaining an exceptionally high standard of quality and technique in spite of constant newspaper deadlines. But it is as a physiognomy journalist that Ettore Viola’s work stands out. He did much more than capture the faces. In his work he is able to convey information about the temperament and character of his subjects by studying their facial features and by grasping the peculiar details of their expressions. Sometimes, he will enhance a feature, for others an object or accessory of clothing may be added in order to flesh out the story. He never resorts to caricature, but tries to capture an attitude — pensive, sad, ironic, diffident or prickly, maybe vaguely perfidious —thus illustrating the sitter’s character or the gist of the adjoining article.

Ettore Viola may be regarded as one of the outstanding illustrators and artists of the late twentieth century. His early career in the 1980s coincided with the recently founded la Repubblica, where he learned his craft under the direction of the unforgettable culture editor, Rossellina Balbi. Later he worked under another legendary editor, Enzo Bettiza at La Stampa. Viola’s drawings, often the centre-piece of double-page lay-outs in the culture section, illustrated feature articles about important personalities, new cultural directions as well as major artistic exhibitions. His difficult task was to enrich the written word and help the reader to see, understand and read between the lines, working always under pressure, with limited space and in spite of cumbersome layouts. This exhibition illustrates Viola’s artistic development and extraordinary achievement in a long and distinguished career of working with the best of the Italian journalistic world.

Biography

1974

Leaves Taranto, where he was born, to attend the Liceo Artistico and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence

1980

Moves to Rome and works as a graphic artist for Il Globo, directed by Michele Tito

1983

Joins la Repubblica, directed by Eugenio Scalfari, as a graphic artist and illustrator

1989

First personal exhibition hosted by the Centro Culturale Francese of his portraits focused on the theme of La Recherche. Catalogue preface written by Giovanni Macchia

1991

“Ritratti degli Scrittori del Mare” (Portraits of Writers of the Sea) are exhibited at the Galleria San Lorenzo al Ducale in Genova

1994

Exhibition at Il Polittico gallery in Rome of his portraits inspired by Il Gattopardo. A book cum catalogue entitled “Il Mondo del Principe” is published by Sellerio

1997

Leaves la Repubblica

1998

Joins a new weekly paper called Liberal, led by Nando Adornato, as an illustrator.
Il Messaggero’s Pietro Calabrese invites him to be a contributor.

1999

Recruited by Marcello Sorgi as an illustrator for La Stampa

2007

At the Rome Auditorium Parco della Musica he presents an anthology entitled “Ritratti Quotidiani” (Everyday Portraits) with contributions by Enzo Golino, Eugenio Scalfari, Pietro Calabrese, Marcello Sorgi, Enzo Bettizza, Igor Man and Massimo Bucchi

2011

Moves to Paris, where he continues to live

2017

Contributes to L’Espresso magazine for two years

2019

He lives and works on new projects between Paris and Rome

THE SECOND SEASON

In Paris with an unimpeded pencil

In 2010, Ettore Viola moves to Paris. In his atelier parisien his production explores different scales and formats. An idea of portraying the great cartoon artists takes shape, including the Americans Chester Gould (author of Dick Tracy), Winsor McCay (Little Nemo), and Milton Caniff (Miss Lace and Steve Canyon), as well as the Belgians Willy Wanderstein (Bob and Bobette) and Eduard P. Jacobs (Blake and Mortimer).

In the French capital, Viola creates a collection of portraits of artists, writers and composers from the last century for an exhibition entitled “I volti del ‘900”, Faces of the Twentieth Century.

While in Paris, he starts a two-year collaboration with the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso.

Ettore Viola is collecting his work on a new website, covering the forty-year time span of his career. He plans to keep adding his future works.

Technique

The main element of Viola’s technique is indian ink traced over pencil lines. Being one of the simplest and fastest techniques, it’s particularly suitable for the frantic times of the daily newspapers he used to work for. It had to be found a defined subject within an afternoon, in order to fill blanks whose shape and size are still unknown at the beginning. And since the “Culture” pages are usually the first ones that need to be finished, Viola had just a few hours to complete the job, usually dealing with bizarre shapes.

After leaving daily newspapers and starting working for weekly magazines, with more human rhythms, Viola’s technique had the opportunity to explore new paths. Colored backgrounds started appearing more and more, representing dreams or thoughts of the portrait character, together with collage patterns and plays of colors.

We find as well indian ink on cardboard drawings, “sfondi a tempera ‘spatolata”, leafy backgrounds, with real leaves “floating” on tempera or with floral decorations, or also with cutouts of adjusted photos. Indeed, through the artists’ vision even the genre of portrait can give birth to any kind of representation.