Matteo

Matteo, born in Lecce, Italy, on August 16th, 1967, began as an architecture student and quickly started to put his newly acquired knowledge into practice even while in school, working for several architectural firms. In 1996, having earned his degree, he started out as a scene painter, specializing in ‘trompe l'oeil.’ In 1998, Matteo deployed his illustration talents for the Italian magazine Il Messaggero dei Ragazzi as well as for the American publishing company Boyds Mills Press. His next step was to work for a publisher of textbooks and schoolbooks. Specializing in historical illustrations, he then worked with the Italian publishers Mondadori Scuola, Carlo Signorelli Editore, and Einaudi Ragazzi. During the ‘90s, Matteo published his first comic strips in the Italian magazine Schizzo. It was not until 2000, however, that he officially entered the world of comic books with the Mèche Rebelle series, with a script by Zidrou (Dupuis 2003). This series would transform into proTECTO (Dupuis 2006, Europe Comics in English 2017), for which he would earn the prize for best artist at the Naples Comic Con. In 2013, Matteo would once again join up with Zidrou to begin work on the historical series Marina (Dargaud), set in Venice.