Giorgio Forattini (born 14 March 1931) is an Italian editorial cartoonist, caricaturist and illustrator. Since 1973 his cartoons have been published on the chief Italian newspapers. Forattini comments "with a corrosive and irreverent humor, the events of Italian and international political life." His cartoons have been published in many collections, including Referendum reverendum (1974), Quattro anni di storia italiana (1977), Nudi alla meta (1985), Insciaquà (1990), Bossic Instinct (1993), Il libro a colori del post-comunismo (1998), Foratt pride (2000), Oltre la Fifa (2002), Il Signore degli Agnelli (2004), Regimen (2006), Vaffancolor (2007), Revoluscon (2008), Satiromantico (2009), Siamo uomini o giornalisti? (2010), Eurodeliri (2011), Fateci la carità (2012), Napoleonitano (2013), Arieccoci (2016), Abbecedario della politica (2017).
Biography
Forattini was born in Rome on 14 March 1931. His parents were both from Rome. His father, a chemist, was originally from Guastalla, Reggio Emilia, while his mother was of Istrian Italian origin.
He graduated from classical high school, then enrolled in the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Rome. He married very young, therefore he abandoned his studies and began looking for work. Forattini was employed in many capacities, including: consultant for a music publishing house, actor, worker in a hydrocarbon industry and salesman.
In the early seventies, he took part in a competition organized by the political newspaper Paese Sera. Forattini stated: “I created a strip with a protagonist named Stradivarius, a sales rep. He was a bit romantic, he loved music and when he got home he would play the violin with a wig on his head." He won the competition, and was hired as a drawer and graphic designer, collaborating to the layout of the newspaper.
On 14 May 1974 he proposed a cartoon to illustrate the news of the day: the victory of the "No" in the divorce referendum. The cartoon was published on the newspaper's front page. His activity is considered journalistic, in fact since 1975, after passing the state exam, he was registered as a professional journalist in the Order of Journalists of Lazio. His career continued at Panorama, with which he still collaborates to this day, and finally arrived at the nascent newspaper La Repubblica. In 1978 he created the insert Satyricon, the first insert in an Italian periodical devoted entirely to satire. With Forattini they published some new signatures, including Sergio Staino and Ellekappa. In September 1979 he accepted the direction of the satirical newspaper Il Male.
In 1982 he was called by Turin's La Stampa, with which he returned to the first pages, and was acclaimed for his work. Forattini's cartoons were the first to be published on the first page of a national newspaper in Italy, and they are issued on a daily basis (another novelty for the Italian press). In 1984 , he returned to the Roman newspaper, continuing to publish one cartoon a day for the front page. After 16 years of uninterrupted collaboration, in 2000 Forattini left la Repubblica following the controversy ensuing from a cartoon depicting D'Alema, for which the cartoonist was sued.
From 2000 to February 2005 he is again the cartoonist of La Stampa. From 2006 to mid-2008 he collaborated with Il Giornale, which he later left due to some disagreements with the new director Mario Giordano. On 2 August 2008 he began a collaboration with the three newspapers of QN Quotidiano Nazionale.
One of the main reasons for his success was the caricatural and somewhat irreverent characterization of some politicians: Craxi dressed as Mussolini, Spadolini naked, Massimo D'Alema as Hitler (but in a communist guise), Goria invisible, Fassino skeletal, Amato as Mickey Mouse, Berlusconi and Amintore Fanfani short in stature, Veltroni like a caterpillar, Lamberto Dini like a toad, Buttiglione like a monkey, Mancino like a boar, Luciano Violante like a fox, Prodi like a communist priest, Umberto Bossi like Pluto, Vincenzo Visco like a vampire, Carlo Azeglio Ciampi a dog, Antonio Di Pietro like Mussolini.
In 2012 he declared that he dislikes political parties: "I hate fundamentalism. I can't stand a party that professes 'whoever is not with me is against me'. To be honest, I can't stand any party."
Most discussed cartoons
One of his best known cartoons is the one he did in 1974 on the occasion of the victory of the no in the referendum on divorce: it represented a bottle of sparkling wine on which was written "NO" that was uncorked by throwing in the air a cork that had the features of Amintore Fanfani.