Eugenio Colonnese (
Fuscaldo, September 3rd, 1929 -
Santo André, August 8th, 2008) was an Italian-born
Brazilian
comic artist. Son of a Brazilian mother (who is African, Portuguese and Indigenous) and Italian father, Colonnese moved to
Argentina as a child, where he began his career in 1949, working for several Argentine magazines. He moved to Brazil in 1964. Three years later, he created the Estúdio D-Arte with
Rodolfo Zalla
Rodolfo Zalla ( Buenos Aires, July 20, 1931 - São Paulo, June 19th, 2016) was an Argentine comics artist. He started drawing comics while still in Argentina in 1953, but his career gained prominence after moving to Brazil with fellow comic art ...
, with whom he produced several comic books for several Brazilian publishers. In 1967, Colonnese created his main characters: Mirza, a Mulher-Vampira ("Mirza, the Vampire Woman") and O Morto do Pântano ("The Swamp Dead"), which, although they have similarities, respectively, to
Vampirella and
Swamp Thing, were created some years before these characters.Colonnese worked mainly with horror comics, but he also worked with other genres and did illustration for educational and advertising comics. In 1985, he was awarded the
Prêmio Angelo Agostini for Master of National Comics, an award that aims to honor artists who have dedicated themselves to
Brazilian comics for at least 25 years.
References
Brazilian comics artists
Italian comics artists
Prêmio Angelo Agostini winners
Brazilian erotic artists
Film poster artists
Brazilian art educators
1929 births
2008 deaths
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