Thirty Portraits of Writers

Tullio Pericoli (b. 1936)
1992, Pencil and pastel on paper

Tullio Pericoli trained under Ernesto Ercolani, director of the Ascoli Civic Art Gallery, and moved to Milan in 1961, where he began working as a cartoonist and illustrator with publications such as Linus, Il Corriere della Sera, and L'Espresso. For Olivetti, he illustrated Robinson Crusoe with splendid watercolours and the drawings were exhibited in Milan, Bologna, Genoa, and Rome in 1985. He began collaborating with La Repubblica in 1984 and, in 1990, the Einaudi publishing house in Turin published Ritratti arbitrari, a series of images of famous literary figures. In 1992, Franco Maria Ricci commissioned him to produce portraits of the authors whose texts appear in the series La Biblioteca di Babele, which he published under the direction of Jorge Luis Borges. Pericoli 'translated' the writers' personalities in his psychological portraits.