«I was born in 1956, on May 23, a Gemini, in San Benedetto del Tronto in the province of Ascoli Piceno. To a mother from Abruzzo and a father from Apulia. Until I was thirteen I lived in San Severo, near Foggia, where I went to middle school. Then art high school in Pescara. I was also at boarding school, with the Jesuits, where I met Tanino Liberatore. But that’s incidental, because maybe the meeting is more important for him than for me. I’ve lived on my own since I was fourteen: five years in Pescara and then in Bologna, studying at DAMS. From 1975 to ’77 I live two years in a ghetto. Then I have fun with the others, I suffer very little, while for many there are painful experiences, see Lorusso and Giorgiana Masi. I started making comics because I was interested in telling things, out of a very pressing need. I’m still an overdue student at DAMS, music and performing arts, and I haven’t re-enrolled since I stopped postponing military service. I only have set design and semiotics left, two exams to graduate. Maybe I’ll take them this year. A couple of years of a fun, reckless life, spent balancing between living things and telling them. Very little apprenticeship, because I went around very little with my portfolio, and I started publishing in Linus. I set off traveling, and after a couple of years, in 1980, full of doubts and in spite of myself, I entered what is the commercial circuit. A real machine, which I’m trying to get out of. In fact, now I live in the countryside, in Montepulciano in the province of Siena, with my woman. And I spend most of the year far from the epicenter, where things are really decided. In 1980 I wondered what the line should be. Today I no longer have these problems; today I wonder what to tell. The public seems to me a kind of child. I found myself like an uncle, not even a close relative like the father, telling fairy tales to put him to sleep at night. And I’m absolutely tired of doing this. At this point, the problem was whether to sell myself, prostitute myself: exasperated showing up everywhere, always being in on things, dressing up, the look, that kind of thing. One day, finally, I decided I wasn’t born to draw Michael Jackson’s little gloves. Just to give an example. Then I found few things to tell. I found them mostly inside suffering, anguish, feeling bad. So today I think I identify with my work as the one who draws the most terrible, heaviest, most problematic, deadliest, most hallucinated and hallucinatory things. Now I’ve fallen deeply in love with a woman, I’ve made her a symbol. It’s she who has practically lit up my life to this day. Everyone knows I’ve been through the tunnel of drugs, but I’d like it to be known that now I’m not so bad physically. I’m still very young in age. Conversely, I’m very old in terms of my experience as a cartoonist. I no longer represent the “new school”. I’m certainly more tied to the old one, and I’m on my way to becoming “the Crepax of the Eighties”. The last character I drew is Pompeo, a deeply anguished character who kills himself twice, like The Tenant. An unsellable story. Inventing a pretty, trivial little story that could be sold in several countries has never interested me. On the other hand, I’m very interested in fashion, or everything that’s fashion. In fact, in some cases I even seemed to anticipate it. In all these years I’ve had a series of experiences: Alter Alter with Pentothal, Il Male, then Cannibale, Frigidaire, Alter again and Corto Maltese, up to Frizzer. Quite a few books have come out too, from Zanardi to Pertini, or Tormenta, or this upcoming one of Pompeo, up to my Glamour Book. Now I’m thinking of working some more for Corto Maltese and for Greece, Spain, France… I also work as an illustrator, with the Val di Chiana nature parks management committee, based at the Montepulciano lake museum. I live in nature and draw animals. And I do archery. Then I’m thinking of doing a great comic work with my future wife. I plan to get married in May, in church: she’s very talented, she studied graphic design and will amaze quite a few people. Together we’ll make a long animated cartoon, with absolutely new systems».
Andrea Pazienza was influenced, especially in his early work, by Shelton, Jacovitti, Moebius, Carl Barks (the inventor of Donald Duck), Magnus, Corben and many others, by his own admission. He loves American and English novelists, such as Melville, Conrad, Hemingway, Stevenson, Scott Fitzgerald. His favorite films are Last Tango in Paris by Bertolucci and Women in Love by Ken Russell: «Because I’m a great sentimentalist», he candidly admits.»
