Sergio Staino died this morning in hospital in Florence .
Cartoonist, Bobo's father and former director of the Unit, he had been ill for some time and hospitalized for a few days. He was 83 years old .
One of the most important Italian illustrators and cartoonists of all time, he created Bobo : an enormously successful character in his strips, characterized by the perennial conflict between loyalty to the party he belongs to and not sharing many of that party's choices. Perfect representation of the torments of communist voters , who then became voters of the PDS, of the DS and finally of the PD.
Bobo was a sort of alter ego of Staino himself, who has always participated in the debate of the Italian left in recent decades. He immediately achieved great popularity since 1979, the year in which his first strip came out, and ended up in various newspapers: L'Unità, Repubblica, Corriere, Espresso and Panorama among others.
Staino was also a television writer and film director. On 8 September 2016 he was appointed director of the Unit , a position from which he resigned after a few months in protest against the ownership's layoff plan.
(Unioneonline/L)