Having graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, Dino Attanasio (1925) began his career as an illustrator. He also worked in animation, participating in the first Italian animated feature film ‘La Rosa di Bagdad’ (The Rose of Baghdad). After World War II he settled in Belgium and took up comics. He worked for a number of Italian, Belgian and Danish magazines, creating an extensive body of work, which includes realistic as well as humorous comics, although the latter are what he is famous for. In 1959 he took over ‘Modeste et Pompon’ from the great André Franquin, and continued to draw, and for most of the time also write it, until 1968. The comic consists of one-page gags about the short-tempered Modest and his best friend Pompon, whose main occupation is to try and calm him down.

Dino Attanasio: “Modeste et Pompon / Modeste and Pom-pon”, 1963, 31 x 40 cm