Le Tre Icone - piccolo - O.M. 20 -

Enzo Facciolo (Milan, 2 October 1931 - Milano, 13 August 2021) is an Italian artist, illustrator and historic cartoonist of Diabolik, the anti-heroic thief, one of the best-known and best-selling comics series from Europe. 

After attending the School of Art at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan, he founded an animation studio without practically having experience in the field and then moved shortly after to collaborate in 1954 with the Pagot brothers and Pagot Film, running commercials and short films. In 1959 he made his debut in comics writing and drawing the Clint Due Colpi series for Edizioni Domai.

His name is linked to the character of Diabolik since 1963, when, thanks to the experience gained in the field of animation, he began his professional collaboration with the Astorina house and the Giussani sisters, with the task of standardizing the drawings of the series a Diabolik comics. It is in that same year that the graphic characterization of the main characters is redefined compared to previous versions at the request of the two authors. Also at the request of the Giussani sisters, he was inspired by the actor Robert Taylor to improve the graphic characterization, conceiving the iconic gaze of the protagonist, characterizing his typical movements and facial expressions as well as defining the costume and the characteristic mask instead of the shapeless hood of the beginnings; this characterization became the reference point for other designers. He will also characterize the supporting actors, such as Inspector Ginko, Eva Kant as well as Altea di Vallemberg; for the latter he will be inspired by the French model Capucine, very famous at the time. For the series he will design both stories and covers. In his long collaboration with the magazine, he made both the pencil drawings and the ink inks, creating over two hundred episodes.

In 1979, to devote himself to advertising graphics, he interrupted his collaboration with the Astorina publishing house, to go to New York where he became a partner of an advertising agency and in turn opened an Italian branch, initially named "Ronne Bonder Studio" which later became " Meta". In the following years he worked for Italian advertising agencies creating campaigns as a graphic designer for Ferrarelle, Collistar, Alitalia, Fernet Branca, and many others. He will return to the Astorina publishing house in 1998. Until his passing he drew many of the stories of the King of Terror.

Since 2009 he has collaborated with the Spazio Papel art gallery, creating unpublished images of Diabolik and Eva Kant.  Since 2019 he has collaborated with the art gallery and Printing House in Milan Originale Multplo S.r.L., creating multiple originals artworks taken from unpublished images by Diabolik and Eva Kant. The works were exhibited at the fifth edition of WopArt 2020 work on paper virtual fair, a well-known international fair of ancient, modern and contemporary works of art on paper in Lugano.

In October 2021, a major exhibition in memory of the artist was inaugurated entitled "Diabolik by Facciolo. Enzo Facciolo and the world of comics" at the Parisi Valle di Maccagno Museum, a series of works by the author who was able to graphically and definitively characterize the characters created by the Giussani sisters, making a fundamental contribution to the success of the character Diabolik.