A cross-linked, a landscape full of obstacles and interstices, with which to plan an escape. A disturbing world, but in front of which courageous and shrewd characters accept the challenge. In the midst of this intricate iron and steel, this impressive metropolitan forest, we are, perhaps we are looking for a way to escape amidst such amazement. Or there is a proud character, ready to take up arms against a sea of ​​trouble to go further. Chase the dream. That seems trivial, but it’s all.

Somehow with his comics and with his paintings, Virginio Vona tells his own story. What needs to be known is why he talks so much about him. A lot.

Virginio one day found himself with nothing. But nothing really. Roman of the Tufello, worked in the general store carrying the cassettes. In that area dominated by the gasometer in Rome. How to say, an object of his own. When it is over there is the void. No prospect. Even mom is dead. What remains of me in Rome? Nothing. I have a girlfriend in Paris and one big dream: draw. What do I do? I’m going? I’m going. So? So.

I make a timing. Fade. We reopen the scene in Africa, in Algiers. That’s where I meet Virginio for the first time. A force of nature, human and artistic. At Fidba, Almeria’s comic festival, where many authors are French, of course, with his Romanesque french, is a crazy splinter. Frenzy of energy, of joy, of the present. Perhaps because he does not even believe that there is really a way to escape when the picture seems to have just made obstacles. But in a handful of months, with a positive and generous willpower, he succeeded in setting up his dream. Phoenix, a self-produced comic that sells thousands of copies (written by a screenwriter who calls himself a guardian angel, Iah-Hel, Frederic Gaffiat), makes him acquainted and knows him well. He exhibits in galleries along with illustrious artists like Druillet and Liberator, and then draws a mural to the Gare de Lyon. And it teaches. And invents. And he lives what he invents. Happy. With a satisfaction to take: return to her Rome to let her know what she was able to do. Go back with your heart beating and a tear ready to go down. Just for a moment.

Virginio has a genuine magnitude. He is an artist free of himself, as it rarely happens in the comic world where the ego is becoming an obsession. Perhaps because educated by his own difficulties, Virginio continues to hover as a butterfly within his troubled worlds. He realized that lightness allows flying. Strength, Virginio: fly.

Luca Raffaelli

*Galleria Glenat, Uberty e Breyne, Napoleon, Parigi- Bruxelles,Tricromia a Roma