Italian · 1927–1995
Italian comic artist who created Corto Maltese and elevated the medium to literature. Born in Rimini, raised partly in Ethiopia, he began drawing comics in Argentina before settling in Europe. Una Ballata del Mare Salato (The Ballad of the Salty Sea) introduced Corto Maltese—a Romantic sailor drifting through history's edges. Pratt's brushwork is virtuosic, his storytelling elliptical, his research deep. He called his work "drawn literature" and lived a life as adventurous as his characters'. The Corto Maltese stories remain essential graphic fiction.