LUCCA COMICS & GAMES DONATES A SELF-PORTRAIT OF WILL EISNER TO THE UFFIZI MUSEUM

USPA NEWS - Lucca, October 29, 2022: This year Lucca Comics & Games acquired from Denis Kitchen a Will Eisner self-portrait, in which he pictures himself together with one of his most famous creations, The Spirit. The self-portrait of Will Eisner will enter the Uffizi collection at the end of Lucca Comics & Games 2022. This special exhibition was announced in Lucca in the presence of the Uffizi Galleries Director, Eike Schmidt, who allowed me a question after the press conference.

FR: “Whics are the best methods and strategies, in your opinion, to contextualize art in the contemporary era and make the content of museums accessible and understandable to a wide audience, like the one at Lucca Comics & Games?”

ES: "Direct and dialogical confrontation is for sure an extremely strong tool to reach even people who normally do not come close to traditional art. In reality there is no distinction between traditional art and contemporary art; as an example cartoonists can be inspired, so they do continuously, by narrative forms of the past, they can take ideas and transform them completely. The important thing in this dialogue is that we not only seek to enlighten comics thanks to the art of the ancient masters, but also to open the understanding of works that are hundreds of years old thanks to the contemporary language of comics and manga.
An event like Lucca Comics & Games is a perfect platform to do this.

Here we have the Tuscan reality that goes way beyond regional borders: the museum with the largest and most important Renaissance art collection in the world and one of the most important contemporary culture events in the world; two Tuscan cities, Florence and Lucca, which join forces to do something that can only be done in Tuscany."