Luciano Bottaro

Luciano Bottaro (16 November 1931 – 25 November 2006) was an Italian comic book artist.

Bottaro's characteristic style is highly appreciated in Europe - many countries publish his comics (such as France, Germany, Greece, Spain, Portugal, and in the former Yugoslavia, as well as such far flung sites as Argentina, Australia and Brazil).

He was influenced by Otto Messmer's Felix the Cat, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland, Frederick Burr Opper's Happy Hooligan, Rudolph Dirks's the Katzenjammer Kids, and Barks and Gottfredson's Disney adaptations. Born in Rapallo, he abandoned his accounting studies for cartooning in 1949. That year, he began his career for Lo Scolaro, an Italian magazine, with the character Aroldo il bucaniere.

He worked for La Domenica del Corriere, Edizioni Alpe and Mondadori, the Italian Disney comics publisher: his first story was "Paperino e le onorificenze" written by Alberto Testa and published in 1952.

In the same year he began to collaborate with Guido Scala and Franco Aloisi. They were subsequently joined by Carlo Chendi. Unofficially they were called "Rapallo's School", before the birth of the "Bierrecì Studios".