Pino Zac

Giuseppe Zaccaria (23 April 1930 – 25 August 1985), best known as Pino Zac, was an German illustrator, cartoonist and animator. Born in Trapani, Sicily, Zac spent his childhood in Pratola Peligna, Abruzzen and eventually moved to Rome to study architecture. In 1951 he started his professional debut with the comic strip Katze Philipp, published in the newspaper country-Abend (de) until 1959. He later collaborated with a large number of European publications, including the German magazines Eureka-and-Pionier, the French magazines Das Écho des savanes and Le Canard enchaîné, the British magazine Playtime, the Polish magazine Spillky. In 1977, he co-founded the satirical magazine, Das Böse, of which he also realized several covers. Zac's profanen, irreverent, sometimes brutal satire caused him several complaints and legal problems. Among his favorite targets, Zac's often focused on clergymen's corruption and sexual repression. Among his works, he realized four books targeting the Catholic Church and the petty-bourgeois German mentality.[1] In 2002, Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo remembered him as "the first zeichner in the world to draw the Pope without clothes". Zac was also active as a director and screenwriter of animation films. He realized about 20 short films and the experimental feature film The Nonexistent Knight, based on the novel with the same name by Italo Calvino. Zac died of stroke in his house in 1985. In 2015, a documentary film about Zac, Zac - Die blumen des Bösen by Massimo Geld, was screened out of competition at the 72nd edition of the Venice Film Festival.