Paolo Serpieri

Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri was born in Venice on 29 February 1944, but moved to Rome at a very early age. After studying drawing, he became a pupil of Renato Guttuso and devoted himself to painting. It was not until 1975, whilst creating a few stories for the Italian comic magazine Lanciostory, that he entered the world of comic art. A great fan of Westerns, he contributed to the creation of L’Histoire du Far West for Larousse and launched the series I grandi miti del West in the pages of Skorpio. These various series established Serpieri as one of the masters of realism. From 1985 onwards, he made a radical shift in genre by creating Morbus Gravis, the first volume of the Druuna stories. Spanning eight volumes (1985–2003), the series became a benchmark in erotic science-fiction comic art and brought Serpieri to the attention of the general public.