“This exhibition is like a suitcase, it contains everything,” said Rina Zavagli-Mattotti, curator of the traveling exhibition “Art Spiegelman, Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics and Scraps.” 400 drawings, sketches, and illustrations spanning from Spiegelman’s first job as a graphic artist for Topps chewing gum/trading card company to his masterpiece “Maus” to his latest covers for The New Yorker will be on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Feb 16-June 9, 2013). Cologne and New York venues to follow. It is the first retrospective of Spiegelman’s work since the MoMA show in 1992. Spiegelman told a Comics Beat reporter: “I trust her (Rina) with my life.”
Zavali-Mattotti is the founder of Galerie Martel in Paris which opened in 2008 with the exhibition “Bob Dylan Revisited.” She got a dozen mostly European graphic artists/cartoonists to create illustrations inspired by Dylan songs, including her husband avant garde illustrator Lorenzo Mattotti who took on “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall.” WW Norton published an oversized book of the graphic interpretations.