Overall: 48.5cm (19in) x 38cm (15in)
Gouache on board. Original cover artwork for Fleetway's Battle Picture Library No. 73 ‘The Digger Breed’, working title ‘Jumping on the Ledge’ and published in September 1962 with the tag line, for the original shirtless Aussie version, ‘The name - TOBRUK - rang out across the desert like bugle call of defiance!’. Inscribed and bearing the artist’s studio stamp of Alessandro Biffignandi verso. Later reworked to present state with shirt and webbing as Battle Picture War Picture Library No.1591 (1971) ‘The Digger Breed’.
Read more
Alessandro Biffignandi (1935-2017) was one of several Italian illustrators hired by Fleetway’s Battle Picture Library to communicate to a target audience of post war British children what their ‘fathers and uncles had been through in combat’. Biffignandi trained at the Favalli Studios in Rome and moved to Milan in 1958. From 1961 Fleetway fought its own battle against its arguably more-famous rival Commando comics. Biffignandi went on to produce striking covers across many other genres, and, after the sale of Fleetway in the late 1980s, turned to book illustration and calendars for, amongst others, Italy's fraud squad, the Italian Guardia di Finanza.