During that period he got interested in adventure novels, eagerly reading novels by James Oliver Curwood, Zane Gray and Kenneth Roberts. However, at the same time he also made friends with his Abyssinian peers, which allowed him to learn the local language and integrate in a world that usually colonisers never knew. The charm of all those different uniforms, crests, colours and faces would be steady present in all his life and works. When he was just 14, he was forced by his father to join the colonial police, thus coming into contact with the military world of that time in Abyssinia, which included not only the Italian army but also the British, the Abyssinian, the Senegalese and the French army. His paternal grandfather Joseph was of English origin, while his maternal grandfather was a Marrano Jew and his grandmother was of Turkish origin. In this melting-pot of races, beliefs and cultures steady mixing one with the other, his mother Evelina Genero was a lover of esoteric sciences, from cabala to cartomancy, while his father Roland was a typical man of that time, a regular that in 1936 was transferred to the Italian colony in Abyssinia, which marked the beginning of Hugo Pratt’s youth in Africa.
Hugo Pratt was born on 15th June 1927 in Rimini but he spent all his childhood in Venice in a very cosmopolitan family environment. He lived in Italy, Argentina, England, France, Switzerland, and he traveled the world over. He has been cited by authors and artists including Tim Burton, Frank Miller, Woody Allen, Umberto Eco, and Paolo Conte. The term “drawn literature” (graphic novel) was coined to define his genre.
His strips, graphic works, and watercolors, have been exhibited in major museums, such as the Grand Palais and Pinacothèque in Paris, the Vittoriano in Rome, Ca ‘Pesaro in Venice, Santa Maria della Scala in Siena. Hugo Pratt (1927-1995) is considered one of the greatest graphic novelists in the world.
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