24 August, 2015 – The Italian Cultural Institute of Montreal will host, from September 8 to October 2, an exhibition featuring the illustrations of famous Italian artist and cartoonist Lorenzo Mattotti. The paintings, fourteen boards made with a brush and ink, show the familiar story of Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers, addressing the issue of the unknown and fear. The exhibition opens on Tuesday, September 8, at 6.30pm, in the exhibition hall of the Institute, with a special toast. The event is an opportunity to retrace, through the art of one of the most influential cartoonists in Italy, the sad and frightening story of the two siblings who, abandoned in the woods by their parents, are taken prisoners by an evil witch. The 14 large plates made with brush and ink illustrate the key episodes of the famous fairy tale, linked by the common thread of fear, a topic on which the Italian cartoonits has already worked with a collaboration in the film “Peur (s) du Noir”: “The biggest fears are those that have shaped the man I am today – Mattotti said in an interview to the magazine Mucchio Selvaggio – I remember when I was a child in the summer, I would stay at my grandparents’ country house, near Mantua. Every noise, shadow, crunch … it was a monster.” The boards on display at the Institute were originally made and shown successfully in New York in 2007, thanks to the “New Yorker” who had asked various artists, including Mattotti, to reinterpret Hansel and Gretel for the production of Metropolitan Opera. Later, Mattotti’s works appeared in children’s books as well as in the comics gaining international praise. They have been published by Orecchio Acerbo, by the French publisher Gallimard Jeunesse and by Toon Books for a revised version of the Grimm tales edited by Neil Gaiman. (Red)