Visual explorations of extraordinary lives across politics, art, and human rights: how Gianluca Costantini’s graphic biographies portray memory and the present through the power of image
The graphic biography represents one of the cornerstones of Gianluca Costantini’s artistic and narrative research. Costantini has made the intersection between drawing and civic engagement the defining feature of his language. As Elettra Stamboulis writes in her essay Biografie a fumetti published on Channeldraw (2021), “telling lives” through comics means exploring both memory and the present, building a form of visual empathy capable of restoring complexity to the figures who have shaped the cultural and political history of our time.
His biographical works—often created in collaboration with Elettra Stamboulis, but also with journalists such as Dario Morgante, Laura Cappon, and Eric Meyer—span art, politics, literature, and human rights, composing a true visual atlas of contemporary civic conscience.
L’ammaestratore di Istanbul (2008, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
With L’ammaestratore di Istanbul, Costantini begins his cycle of graphic biographies. The work, dedicated to Osman Hamdi Bey—painter, archaeologist, and founder of Ottoman museum institutions—marks the first example of the poetics that would define his later production: an interpretative biography built on multiple narrative layers and a constant dialogue between past and present.
As Costantini writes, “it was an instinctive work: I didn’t know that from that moment on, biographies would become a constant in my production.” Late 19th-century Turkey becomes a laboratory for reflecting on cultural identity, the encounter between East and West, and the role of art as a political instrument. Costantini’s precise, restrained line constructs a visual narration made of silences and geometries, where the drawing not only describes faces but digs into the contradictions of history.
Julian Assange (2011, written by Dario Morgante)
In Julian Assange, Costantini and Dario Morgante engage with a global figure of contemporary counter-information. The book reconstructs the life of WikiLeaks’ founder—from childhood to political asylum—showing how the defense of freedom of information turned into an international persecution.
The comic alternates journalistic reconstructions and symbolic panels, where Costantini’s essential line becomes a language of protest. As the artist himself notes, the goal is not to portray a modern hero, but to expose the mechanisms of silence and censorship that pervade the digital society. The work also stands as an example of graphic journalism, where comics act as tools of documentation and solidarity.
Cena con Gramsci (2012, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
In Cena con Gramsci, Costantini and Stamboulis reinvent biography as an imaginary dialogue. Antonio Gramsci’s figure is not narrated linearly but evoked through a symbolic meeting with a young student. The comic, based on a stage play, translates that theatrical structure into a visual language of suspended conversations, quotations, and reflections.
Costantini’s Gramsci is alive, thoughtful, vulnerable—not an icon of the Left, but a contemporary interlocutor. The pages alternate temporal planes and color tones, building a dialogic biography where theory becomes experience. The result is a meditation on critical thinking as a form of freedom and on the importance of educating the gaze through culture.
Arrivederci Berlinguer (2013, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
With Arrivederci Berlinguer, the authors continue their exploration of symbolic figures of the Italian Left, portraying Enrico Berlinguer not as a political monument but as a human being marked by doubt, idealism, and integrity. The comic unfolds as a collective memory, where private recollections and archival imagery intertwine with the author’s emotional perception.
The visual construction alternates Costantini’s sharp line with textual inserts drawn from Berlinguer’s original words and direct testimonies. The book thus becomes a sentimental portrait of political morality, a tribute to the idea of politics as service and ethical vision.
Pertini fra le nuvole (2014, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
In Pertini fra le nuvole, Costantini and Stamboulis shift toward allegory and the fantastic. President Sandro Pertini—beloved symbol of republican integrity—is portrayed after death, flying “among the clouds” and conversing with other historical figures.
The irony and lightness of the story coexist with a deep reflection on democratic memory and the legacy of the Resistance. Costantini’s visual language becomes more dynamic, with broad color fields and essential lines that convey vitality and warmth. The comic is both biography and civic fable, reactivating in the reader a sense of belonging to a shared history.
Diario segreto di Pasolini (2015, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
With Diario segreto di Pasolini, the authors confront one of the most complex and elusive figures of the 20th century: Pier Paolo Pasolini. The comic is structured as an emotional recording, an interior voice moving through memories, places, and quotations, rendering a restless yet lucid Pasolini who still speaks to our time.
Costantini’s graphic line becomes fragmented, almost diaristic, alternating realistic moments and abstract visions. The story does not attempt to solve the mystery of Pasolini but invites the reader into his contradictions—his love for truth and his suffering for life. It is a work that blends poetry and reportage, body and word, restoring to comics the function of poetic biography.
Patrick Zaky, una storia egiziana (2022, written by Laura Cappon)
The case of Patrick Zaky represents a moment of strong personal involvement for Costantini. Having already created numerous portraits and graphic campaigns for Zaky’s liberation, Costantini collaborated with journalist Laura Cappon on a comic that merges investigative reporting and human testimony.
Through Cappon’s narration and Costantini’s drawings, readers retrace the Egyptian researcher’s story—his imprisonment, solidarity campaigns, and the role of human rights in an authoritarian context. The comic becomes an act of visual resistance, a political gesture that renews the idea of biography as a space of empathy and collective responsibility.
Zodiac – Ai Weiwei (2024, written by Elettra Stamboulis)
Zodiac marks a moment of symbolic experimentation. Here, Stamboulis and Costantini construct a narrative in which the biography of Ai Weiwei merges with astrology and myth. Each zodiac sign becomes an archetype through which to explore human behavior and social relations, in a choral and satirical narrative.
Though not a biography in the traditional sense, Zodiac reflects on the need to portray the human being in their entirety, linking individual destiny to the collective forces and symbolic structures that govern life. The graphic line is more concise, closer to the language of political drawing, where irony alternates with philosophical reflection.
Xi Jinping, L’Empereur du silence (2024, written by Eric Meyer)
With Xi Jinping. L’imperatore del silenzio, Costantini expands political biography to a global scale. In collaboration with French journalist Eric Meyer, he narrates the trajectory of the Chinese leader and the mechanisms of control, censorship, and power in contemporary China.
The work merges geopolitical inquiry with visual narration, using black and white as the language of silence and oppression. Costantini presents a complex portrait, free of ideological simplifications, where Xi emerges both as a symbol of self-representing power and as a mirror of Western anxieties. The comic continues the author’s reflection on the relationship between freedom and authority, sketching a global atlas of control.
Conclusion
Over nearly two decades, Gianluca Costantini has transformed the graphic biography into a political and poetic laboratory. His works, diverse in tone and theme, share the same tension: to restore humanity to the faces of history and to show how every biography is, ultimately, a form of resistance against simplification.
