Attilio Mussino

Attilio Mussino was an Italian painter and cartoonist best known for designing the illustrations for the first color edition of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio in 1911.  During World War I, Mussino was a soldier who used his artistic skills to draw scenes of the French battlefields and everyday activities of military operations.  Trained at the Albertina Academy of Fine Arts in Turin, Italy - a centuries-old institute of higher education, Mussino illustrated numerous children’s books, including the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen, and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer.  Alongside his many artistic achievements, Mussino will be best remembered for his definitive portrait of the mischievous character Pinocchio, and the version of this important fairy tale that is the most reprinted and bestselling work of children’s literature.