Exhibition "Il Secolo di Bort"

From 24 September 2026 to 27 September 2026, From 1 October 2026 to 4 October 2026

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Opening hours: 3:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Tickets: Full price €6 - Reduced price €3.50

Sunday, August 2, 2026, marked the centenary of the birth of Mario Bortolato, aka BORT., a cartoonist and comedian who lived sixty-five years of his long life in Alessandria, making this city a symbol of Italian society.
His drawings of the habits, vices, and virtues of simple, "normal" men and women drew inspiration from his simple, "normal" Alexandrian daily life as a public official, father, husband, son-in-law, friend, a man perfectly integrated into the city's social life yet virtually invisible to the general public.
For this reason, the City of Alessandria is paying homage to the cartoonist with an exhibition entitled "The Century of BORT." The exhibition will open on Thursday, September 3, at 5:30 pm, in the prestigious Sale d’Arte at Via Machiavelli 13.
This is a new major exhibition in memory of Bortolato, organized by ASM Costruire Insieme and curated by Cristoforo Moretti and BORT’s children, Paolo and Marina Bortolato. Following those hosted at Palazzo Cuttica in
2019 and at the Teatro delle Scienze in Alessandria in 2023, it follows those hosted at Palazzo Cuttica in 2019 and at the Teatro delle Scienze in Alessandria in 2023.
The exhibition at the Sale d’Arte, which will be open to the public from September 4 to October 4, 2026, features over a hundred
original drawings, films, and virtually unobtainable materials, including a room specifically dedicated to the city of
Alessandria.
BORT is the most popular humorous cartoonist of the twentieth century, but above all, he was, and will continue to be, an
extraordinary stimulator of memories.
Looking at BORT's cartoons isn't just a smile, a appreciation for the graphic style, or a sense of wonder at unexpected ideas: it's also a thought for loved ones who are no longer with us, for adolescence, for hours spent
doing crosswords, for tranquility, for vacations—in short, for happy moments. Looking at BORT today is a memory.

Born in Salzano (VE), Mario Bortolato grew up in various places following his father, a city secretary, before arriving in Alessandria in 1954, after a youth spent in Voghera, the city where his graphic talent began to blossom.
And in Alessandria, fame was just around the corner: the year after his arrival, he won the Palme d'Or at the Bordighera Humour Fair, and dozens of his cartoons were published in a major cartoonist's exhibition in New York.
Already featured in major magazines, in the early 1960s he joined the Disegnatori Riuniti agency in Milan, and his cartoons invaded newsstands.
The second half of that decade saw the publication of "Le Ultime Parole Famose" (The Last Famous Words) for Settimana Enigmistica, a column he would draw for fifty years and which would establish him as the undisputed national number one.
The exhibition "Il secolo di BORT" (The Century of BORT) at the Sale d'Arte in Alessandria, open from September 4 to October 4, 2026, Thursday to Sunday, from 3:00 pm to 7:00 pm, is also accompanied by the volume "La voce di BORT. - biography of the most popular cartoonist of the twentieth century," edited by Cristoforo Moretti with Paolo and
Marina Bortolato.
And that's not all, as Mayor of Alessandria Giorgio Abonante announces in the preface to the volume, "BORT.
has given so much to Alessandria and its territory, but without making it seem heavy: the legacy of the Greats is all the more significant the less flaunted it is, and the Venetian Bortolato has displayed throughout his life a perfectly Piedmontese understatement.
The decades-long persistence of his humor, the refined pleasantness of his style, the cheerful—but no less serious—photograph of a world that largely belongs to the past but that built the Italy of today, are all aspects that place BORT. among the giants of twentieth-century national humor.
For all these reasons, we believe it is right that Alessandria proudly preserves the memory of Mario Bortolato's Omini
with a permanent installation, so that visitors can recognize them and understand that Alessandria was and is also BORT's city."

via Machiavelli 13, Sale D'Arte - 15121 Alessandria

Telephone: +39 349 937.8256
E-mail: serviziculturali.0220@asmcostruireinsieme.it