Herbert Pagani

Who was Herbert Pagani?

Herbert Pagani was an artist and musician.

He comes from a family of Libyan Jews who were italianized by the Colonial Administration. He spent his childhood and adolescence between Italy, Germany and France. This nonstop wandering about different cultures drove him to seek out a personal language that enabled him to do without words, and at the same time to communicate with all, and he found drawing.

In 1964, Pagani at the age of twenty was introduced to the public and the Press at the Pierre Picard Gallery in Cannes, where he exhibited his Indian-ink drawings and engravings. Among his first Italian buyers were Giorgio Soavi for the Olivetti Collection, Federico Fellini and Bernardo Zapponi. Under the heading : "A twenty-year-old visionary", the French poet Jean Rousselot presented Pagani to a wider public from the pages of Planete. Shortly afterwards, he began to draw for that famous review edited by Jacques Bergier and Louis Pauwels, becoming one of the youngest exponents of the Realisme fantastique movement.

In 1965 Pagani illustrated Fantarca by Giuseppe Berto for Rizzoli, and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley for the Club des Amis du Livre.