Description
The battles are a less well-known project to the public at large, designed "for fun" by the great Milanese master of comics and illustration Guido Crepax.
After university, Crepax elaborates twenty historical battles on paper - including the battle of Marengo - which he realizes in his spare time over almost ten years. The exhibition at Palazzo Cuttica is organised by the Municipality of Alessandria and the Company Costruire Insieme, curated by the Crepax Archive and Alessandra Coppa with the graphic project by Andrea Lancellotti. It has been realized with original documents specifically designed for the city of Alessandria, where only the battles of Crepax will be on show for the first time.
He started out as game creator in 1946 when he created simple but effective sport simulations: cycling, football, athletics, motor racing and boxing.
The game of battles is his best and most complex. After careful research in the library to read up on the battle fields, the size of the armies, the uniforms, and weapons, Crepax realized hundreds of cardboard soldiers, each was drawn and coloured back and front, cut out and glued onto pedestals of balsa wood and finally nitro-polished and balanced with a small lead square. He faithfully reproduced numerous historical battles, between the early 1950s and the late 1960s, and Palazzo Cuttica will exhibit the battles of Marengo, Trafalgar, Waterloo, Solferino and San Martino.
It is an out and out game, in which armies confront each other, a sort of anticipation of the first "wargames" and subsequent role-playing games at the computer.