Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Nino Caroselli - Air Ace covers

Benedetto (Nino) Caroselli was an Italian painter and illustrator. I know very little about him, although he would appear to have been active in Italy as a cover artist and painter. The image below is the only one I've been able to find after a quick scour of the internet. He also produced at least one book cover (Angelique and the King by Sergeanne Golon, J. B. Lippincott).

For the UK Nino Caroselli produced hundred of covers for the pocket libraries published by Fleetway. He first appeared in 1959 as an illustrator for Top Spot but very quickly established himself as a cover artist on Super Detective Library, Thriller Picture Library and Cowboy Picture Library. However, it was his work for the war libraries that would keep him busy for many years during the 1960s. Here's a small selection of some of his covers for the early issues of Air Ace, all from original artwork. Some of these will, no doubt, be making an appearance in David Roach's Aarrgghh! book, coming out from Carlton in October.

(All images for Air Ace are © IPC Media.)

3 comments:

  1. This must be the Caroselli who did some rather good covers for the Sexton Blake Library e.g. Fourth Series No.452, Witch-Hunt! Nice to discover something of his other work. Thanks.

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  2. Hi David,

    Yep, it's the same guy. He did 16 covers for the Sexton Blake Library in 1960-61; a number of other Italian artists did covers around the same time. Fernando Carcupino was a particular favourite of mine from that era.

    Steve.

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  3. I've been working with a lovely lady in her 80s who lived in Campo de' Fiori in the 1970s and dated Aldo Marinelli for a time, who wrote thrillers and romances which Nino would illustrate. She tells me that Nino lived in a flat just North of Piazza Navona and had a studio between Navona and dei Fiori where he and Aldo would work day and night. Nino would apparently do a lot of book covers and film posters but preferred more classical work and painted friends around the Campo regularly, and would paint Roman scenes on request (and for a tidy sum) for gifts for diplomats etc.

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