Faustinelli, Mario Original colour drawing - La Grande Muraglia - 1950

Original panel by master Mario Faustinelli

This stunning hand-painted panel by Master Faustinelli is part of a personal collection directly from the artist

Mario Giuseppe Francesco Faustinelli (Venice, November 8, 1924 – Milan, July 31, 2006)
He debuted as a comics artist in 1943, creating for the Albo d'oro Audace series, published by the Audace Editorial staff, the humorous/adventure series Pompeo Bill, written by Gianluigi Bonelli; in 1946, together with other authors such as Hugo Pratt and Paul Campani, he produced the Asso di Picche series, a kind of masked avenger that would also give its name to a magazine, using a poker card deck as his signature; the positive experience and the good success of the series abroad led the group of authors to work in Argentina and Brazil. There, he collaborated until the mid-1950s on the Misterix magazine, creating comic series such as Kim de la nieve and Pat Brando.

Returning to Italy in 1957, he became the editor-in-chief of Selezione Romantica, an illustrated periodical of fiction issued every two months as a gift to consumers of a Swiss bouillon cube, and published until 1959, whose editorial office was located in the Cannaregio district of Venice. He then began a long collaboration for Corriere dei Piccoli with Rinaldo Dami and Carlo Porciani, writing stories such as the humorous series Apollo e Apelle, drawn by Paolo Piffarerio, and creating in 1963 the character Kolosso, as well as numerous texts for children's encyclopedias.

He collaborates with Maria Perego's team on the series centered on the character Topo Gigio, also writing the screenplay for the stop-motion feature Le avventure di Topo Gigio (1961) together with Guido Stagnaro.

He died in Milan on July 31, 2006.