Italy | ruined head

Sex and Horror
The Art of Emanuele Taglietti
Mark Alfrey | Korero Press | 2015 | 160 pages

Sex and Horror features a spectacularly lurid collection of Emanuele Taglietti’s seventies and eighties Italian comic book cover art.

Taglietti first worked as a set designer in Italian cinema before becoming a freelance illustrator for the burgeoning fumetti (comic book) industry. The cultural revolution of the sixties ushered in an era of acceptance towards adults-only themes of sex and horror in comics, with outrageous cover art selling the prospect of titillation in the cheaply printed pages.

Painting upwards of twelve covers a month, often with little direction or information about the story contained inside, Taglietti rendered images of popular characters across the crime, fantasy and horror genres. Taking advantage of the relaxation of the country’s censorship laws to fully emphasis the female anatomy, his vampires, policewomen and musketeers burst from the confines of their clothing—only occasionally being encumbered with the presence of undergarments.

Easily dismissed by today’s standards as gratuitous or exploitative, Taglietti’s art illuminates a vanished period of gleeful abandon in comic book illustration.