2023-10-21 18:33:32
by Antonio Carioti
Sergio Staino, journalist and cartoonist, died at the age of 83
Sergio Staino died today in hospital in Florence. Journalist, cartoonist, illustrator, Bobo’s father and former director of Unit, he was 83 years old; he had been hospitalized for a few days, but had been ill for some time. Below is the memory of Antonio Carioti.
We will greatly miss Bobo, the naive and bungling anti-hero of a left willing to make fun of itself. Its creator Sergio Staino passed away today at the age of 83, leaving a great void in the world of satire and the memory of many smiles – sometimes even good laughs – that he managed to create with his strips and cartoons in over forty years. years of activity.
Also thanks to Staino, in the 1980s the PCI had begun to shed the self-importance and presumption of superiority it had long nurtured. On the pages of the official newspaper, l’Unit, Bobo had brought that streak of irreverence that had already been circulating at the base of the party for a long time, albeit hidden under the cloak of unanimism that does not allow for doubts. Precisely because as a young man he had had decades of experience as a militant in the most rigidly sectarian left, that of the Marxist-Leninists who admired Mao Zedong, Staino had developed an anti-dogmatic sensitivity which spilled over into Bobo’s infinite hesitations and which had pushed him to make fun even of the PCI secretaries, to the point of drawing the unfortunate Alessandro Natta naked. Later he would even become director of the Unit, albeit for a rather short period between 2016 and 2017.
Born in Piancastagnaio, in the province of Siena, on 8 June 1940, Staino was the son of a carabiniere. Having a talent for drawing since he was a boy, he graduated in architecture and had worked for a long time as a technical education teacher and had settled in Scandicci, not far from Florence, in the heart of red Tuscany. He arrived in the world of comics relatively late, because the year of Bobo’s birth was 1979, when the likeable self-deprecating character made his debut on the pages of the magazine Linus, directed at the time by Oreste Del Buono, immediately enjoying considerable success. Member of the PCI, bald, bespectacled, bearded and rather fat, Bobo was a sort of alter ego of the author, he reflected his uncertainties and profound human sensitivity.
In 1982 Staino became Unit’s cartoonist. And the readers of the communist newspaper, accustomed to the sharp and biased satire of the cursive writer Fortebraccio, had soon become familiar with the much more thoughtful Bobo and with the supporting characters: his wife Bibi, his children Ilaria and Michele, his grumpy companion Molotov, still imbued with Stalinist mentality.
With his gentle satire – sometimes melancholic, sometimes playful, never vulgar – Staino had reached out to a new generation of communists, more open and inclined to ask questions outside the usual ideological canons.
However, his work was also highly appreciated outside the party. Umberto Eco said that a scholar of the future, unaware of Italian events, would have found in Bobo’s strips an excellent source for understanding the changes that have occurred in our society since the 1980s. In 1984 Staino deservedly won the Forte dei Marmi Satire prize. And in 1986, under his direction, Tango was born, a satirical supplement to the Unit in which Altan, ElleKappa, Riccardo Mannelli, Michele Serra, David Riondino, Gino and Michele, Francesco Guccini collaborated.
Here, following an attack by Forattini, who had accused him of not having the courage to direct his attacks towards the communist leaders, Staino had drawn on the front page in July 1986 Natta naked and intent on dancing to the music of a small orchestra directed by Giulio Andreotti and Bettino Craxi. The case had caused a stir and many in the PCI had not taken that idea well, but it was undoubtedly a healthy cold shower that Staino administered to the party with considerable courage.
In October 1988, after various vicissitudes, Tango closed and in its place Cuore was born, directed by Serra, in which Staino participated and then left. He did not like certain polemical excesses of his former traveling companions: although he always claimed his left-wing identity, first in the PDS then in the DS and finally in the PD, he had no hesitations in recognizing the failure of communism and looked to the reformist roots of socialism, although, it must be added, he had never liked Bettino Craxi. Much less Silvio Berlusconi.
Staino was, however, light years away from any Manichaean vision: he had rather poorly received the candidacy of the former public prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro for the Ulivo in Mugello; he also opposed populism, particularly in the Grillina version of it, which he considered violent and dangerous. If anything, although avowedly atheist, Staino appreciated some sectors of the Catholic world and looked with extreme sympathy at the figure of Jesus, who he considered the first socialist.
He had also collaborated for almost a year, in 2018, with the bishops’ newspaper, Avvenire, publishing comics then collected in the volume Hello Jesus (Giunti, 2019). Also worth mentioning is his activity as a screenwriter in two films: Horses are born (1988) and Don’t call me Omar (1992).
Among the many books published, That Lord of Scandicci (Rizzoli Lizard, 2020) deserves a mention, a sort of summation of Bobo’s vicissitudes. Since 1977 Staino had suffered serious vision problems, caused by progressive retinal degeneration, which over time had made him almost blind. He had faced the disease with extreme courage, assisted by his wife Bruna, and had continued to work until the end, with the help of the computer and with considerable effort. Since 2017 he had been working for La Stampa, but he had not lost hope of seeing Unit revived. With his usual equanimous spirit, he also recognized significant qualities in Giorgia Meloni. But he looked at public life with growing perplexity: Today – he said in an interview – there is less need for satire. Today politicians desecrate themselves.
October 21, 2023 (modified October 21, 2023 | 11:45)
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