Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi, Part 5

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

Even as Ramponi’s career transitioned more toward teaching, in 1978 he was hired to produce concept art for the low-budget film Starcrash that hoped to capitalize on Star Wars’ recent popularity.


It could probably go without saying that Ramponi’s drawings were ultimately far more interesting than the resultant movie.



Ramponi even kept his hand in poster design throughout the 1980s, with the organizers of the international Holiday on Ice shows commissioning him to create their official posters several years in a row. Ramponi eventually retired in 1992 after having served many years as the head of the Roberto Rossellini Institute for Cinematography and Television’s animation department. The artist delighted readers in his day and continues to garner new admirers.



Ramponi the man also seems to have been admired and cherished by those who knew him, including several of his former students who have reached out to me in response to these new Lost Art Books collections. Mario Verger, who writes a lengthy introduction to Volume 1 of Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi (the basis for much of what I know about Ramponi), has been a vocal champion of both the man and the artist.


(Above: an image from Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi before and after being restored for publication)
Verger recounts in affectionate detail how as an animation student in the mid-1980s he had the good fortune to cross paths with and eventually be befriended by Federico Fellini, who in turn introduced the young aspirant to Ramponi. Verger has carried the torch for the rest of us ever since, beckoning us to pay attention to this unjustly forgotten master artist’s work.



To quote Verger’s introduction, “Ramponi loved art, especially Francisco Goya and Leonardo da Vinci...when he worked, he continuously listened to classical music: Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn were his preferred composers....He subscribed to a saying dear to Romans of his generation: ‘ Ma che me frega,’ that is, ‘ What do I care?’ reflecting a spirit of independence unencumbered by societal expectations.”


And there’s something telling about a daughter’s love. Anna Maria Ramponi, Niso’s oldest child, couldn’t have been more enthusiastic and encouraging about our plan to honor her father’s legacy in our Lost Art Books series. An ocean and a language may have separated us, but a shared affection for her father and his work transcended any barriers to understanding.

(Niso Ramponi, c. 1958)
When Ramponi’s wife died in 2000, he moved from his beloved Rome to live out his last days with their daughter Anna Maria in the tranquil town of Bozzolo in the province of Mantova before eventually passing away himself in 2002 at age 78.

(Niso Ramponi, c. 1990)
Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.

KREMOS: Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1+2 from Joseph Procopio on Vimeo.

A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career.


Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi, Part 4

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio


Ramponi’s pen name, Kremos, was born of necessity: Like many of his generation, after the war Ramponi was conscripted into the Italian army for a year of service. Loath to abandon his budding cartooning and illustration career but barred by military regulations from working as a freelancer, Ramponi conspired with a friend named Sandro Cremo, who acted as his intermediary to secure and deliver freelance art assignments on Ramponi’s behalf. To maintain the ruse, Ramponi signed his work Kremos, a pseudonym that stuck even after his discharge from military duty.


In the mid-1950s, however, after a dispute with another artist who tried to lay legal claim to the name Kremos, Ramponi abandoned the handle and began to sign his work simply by his first name, Niso.



Keen-eyed U.S. collectors of 1950s men’s magazines such as Jest, Gaze, or Gee-Whiz will find the occasional Kremos or Niso-signed cartoon within those pages.



For the most part, though, Ramponi’s work — while every bit as accomplished if not superior to his U.S. counterparts — was rarely seen outside of his homeland until the publication of the two Lost Art Books devoted to preserving his work.



By the late 1950s and into the 1960s, Ramponi’s popularity had reached a point where he was now also creating most of the covers for Il Travaso, which allowed him to stretch into other media, painting with a sensuous verve that sacrificed none of the fun of his ink drawings.



Yet on top of those assignments, Ramponi kept working on animated features. But the workload must have swamped even Ramponi’s seemingly Herculean capacities when he accepted an offer in 1962 to teach animation at the Scuola della Vasca Navale. In short order, Ramponi’s appearances in Il Travaso became infrequent and eventually stopped altogether in 1963.



But Ramponi certainly didn’t stop producing work. In addition to his teaching, he worked for the next couple of decades in television on a wide variety of projects, winning top industry awards for his animation on some of Italy’s most popular TV programs, such as Carosello in 1972.


(Above: a scene from a Ramponi-animated Carosello commercial cartoon, c.1960s)
Concluded tomorrow...



Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.



A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part 3

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

In 1948 Ramponi found the perfect venue for his talents at the weekly satirical magazine Il Travaso (roughly The Overflow) and its equally irreverent sibling Il Travasissimo.



It was in these sometimes-confiscated periodicals that Ramponi made his name drawing some of the world’s best “good girl” art for 15 years, and where he was bequeathed a variety of nicknames.



His editors dubbed him The Scarlet Pimpernel born from a frustration of never knowing where Ramponi could be found, especially when deadlines loomed.



His fellow staff artists dubbed him Sovrano di Donnine, or King of the Little Ladies, for the curvaceous comic beauties he excelled at drawing in nearly every issue. Below is a video of Ramponi and his cartoonist colleagues at Il Travaso in the 1950s promoting a reader's poll to choose which staff artist's drawing of feminine beauty should be crowned "Miss Travaso."



As contemporary cartoonist Jerry Carr describes in the foreword to Volume 2 of Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, “Kremos’ s work reminds us of the layouts of Hank Ketcham, the polish of Bill Ward, the humor of Dan DeCarlo, and the grace of Jack Cole—while exemplifying something entirely original."



It was in these early years at Il Travaso that Ramponi met his wife, married in 1950, and started a family shortly thereafter.



Throughout the 1950s, Ramponi not only supplied a steady stream of weekly gag panels to Il Travaso, but he also occasionally contributed pin-up drawings to other periodicals, such as SignorinaOtto, accepted assignments for more movie poster work, and worked as an animator on numerous Italian productions, including I Picchiatelli (1952) and Attanasio Cavallo Vanesio (1953).



Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.



A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part2

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

The Allies liberated Italy, but not before bombing the animation facilities in which Ramponi worked, leaving the young Roman artist without a steady job.



It wasn’t long, however, before he found himself collaborating with another young cartoonist looking for a way to ply their shared trade in the upended capital city. For a couple of years Ramponi had been chumming around with fellow cartoonist Federico Fellini (seen below), and when the future filmmaker hatched a plan to open the Funny Face Shop to sell caricatures to the occupying U.S. soldiers, Ramponi was happy to take part in the enterprise.


Not too long after, Fellini’s friendship with Roberto Rossellini started opening doors for the aspiring filmmaker. In 1945, Fellini pitched the idea for an animated short that would accompany Rossellini’s latest production, Rome Open City. When the producers approved the idea, Fellini immediately pulled in Ramponi and their mutual friend Luigi Giobe to head up the animation team that would work on a short titled, Hello Jeep!


After months of work, new producers took over the financing of the Rossellini film, and unfortunately they immediately halted production on the nearly finished cartoon.



But if one opportunity was trampled mid-bloom, others quickly sprung up from the rubble of post-war Rome for the young Ramponi. Besides finding other animation jobs, Ramponi tried his hand at various syndicated newspaper comic strips (Le Prodezze di Hamedin, Ivo il Primitivo, etc.).


By the late 1940s, Ramponi also found himself in high demand as a movie poster and lobby card artist for both Italian productions...



... as well as the likes of Walt Disney, who was only then able to start releasing many of his studio’s movies in Italy.



Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’s work anywhere in the world.



A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.

Kremos: The Life and Art of Niso Ramponi , Part 1

By guest author Joseph V. Procopio

Although Niso Ramponi (1924–2002) worked under numerous names - Kremos, Niso, Nys O’ Ramp - he occupies a singular space as Italy’s premiere pin-up cartoonist.


From the mid-1940s through the early 1960s, Ramponi’s work could be found everywhere from newspaper comic strips to movie posters to the covers of weekly magazines.



Born in Rome in 1924, it was not long before Ramponi’s drawing gifts began to emerge and be recognized by his parents and teachers. As a child he won first place in a national drawing contest, and in grade school his teacher would often request for Ramponi to stay after school to draw large backdrops on the blackboard of various settings relevant to the next day’s lessons.



When it came time for high school, Ramponi was accepted into an art preparatory school at Via Ripetta in Rome, where he studied under Walter Lazzaro of the highly influential Lazzaro family of artists. Lazzaro was known to be a reserved and severe instructor, but he immediately recognized the young Ramponi’s exceptional talent, and a lifelong friendship eventually formed between pupil and instructor.



Although Ramponi is better known today for his beautiful cartoons and magazine covers, he actually spent much of his life working in animation.

Niso Ramponi, 1955
During World War II, Ramponi’s uncle, a documentary filmmaker, secured the teenager a job in the animation department of the Italian newsreel agency, INCOM. The young Ramponi left art school to seize the opportunity, and he quickly found himself acquiring increasing amounts of responsibility, including helming several animated shorts as director.

Continued tomorrow...

Kremos: The Lost Art of Niso Ramponi, Vols. 1 & 2 are the first collections of the artist’ s work anywhere in the world.



A decade in the making and benefiting from careful restoration, this new two-volume set covers the Italian cartoonist and animator’s entire career. Volume 1 collects over 200 of Kremos’s bodacious black and white cartoons and illustrations and is fronted by a 6,000-word introduction by Ramponi’s friend and current-day animator, Mario Verger. Volume 2 adds 250 curvaceous color comics and covers to the set, with a foreword by contemporary comic artist Jerry Carr. Combined, these volumes offer over 500 professionally translated examples of his work and a comprehensive overview of a maverick artist at the height of his powers. Both volumes are available for immediate order from the publisher, Lost Art Books and select online retailers.

Joseph V. Procopio has been working in publishing as a writer, editor, and creative director in print and Web media for over 20 years. He has a lifelong passion for illustration, cartooning, and the graphic arts.