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Lorenzo Sperlonga was born in 1969 in
Rome, Italy. He studied illustration, graphic design and animation at the
Roberto Rossellini's Italian Institute for Cinematography and Television in
Rome. In 1989, after a short time at the Valeri Visual Arts, he started working
at Lapis Graphic Design where he worked until 1997, developing advertising
campaigns, illustrations, storyboards and interior design.
From 1992 to 1993 he worked with Vallardi Publishing for the child-orientated fairy tales comic book
Tiramolla and the TV magazine Sattellite, painting cover illustrations and caricatures.
1994 marked the beginning of his career as a pin-up illustrator and he painted his first cover for
Skorpio, published by Eura, one of the biggest comic publishers in Italy. In the same year he also started working with Playmen Comix
and other titles in the adult industry.
pIn 1995 he painted illustrations for the Italian editions of Playboy
and Penthouse.
During the 1990s he also collaborated as a production designer and background
painter with Airone, Farmtoons, Matita Animata and Musicartoon for various
different animation features.
In 1995 in Los Angeles, he met Heavy Metal publisher Kevin Eastman and
together discussed the possibilities of his working in the American market. Five
years later his first cover for Heavy Metal was out in the US.
In 1998, he moved to Los Angeles and
started working for Larry Flynt Publications. There, he drew and painted his first
comic, Angel Baby. Seven burning pages of highly erotic content written by Bruce David.
Even today, his illustrations appear periodically in Hustler.
During this time, he was still working for Farmtoons and selling his paintings to Skorpio and Lanciostory in Italy. He had not forgotten his first calling
as graphic designer and he
started to collaborate and design for a big exotic fashion company in Hollywood
called Forplay.
At the end of 1999 he secured a contact with Jim Pinto
of AEG (Alderac Entertainment Group) and started producing a large number of
illustrations for fantasy and western card games. In the meantime, NBM published
one of his paintings for the cover of Sizzle.
With the new millennium, Dreamstone started publishing posters of his
artwork in Australia.
An important collaboration began in 2001 with Avalanche Press and he painted a
cover for the fantasy game Greenland. From there, he became the main cover artist for Avalanche. In
2002, two further covers were published for Heavy Metal, which also featured
one of his paintings in the calendar. Heavy Metal dedicated a gallery to
his work and started printing posters of his pin-up girls. Spring 2003 saw a collaboration
with the Tamara Bane Gallery in Los Angeles.
That same year, MG Publishing released
world-wide his first book, The Art of Lorenzo Sperlonga.
In February 2003, Veronika Kotlajic posed for two paintings commissioned by MG for the covers (double edition) of the first issue of the new magazine
Artcore.
Spring 2003 Go Stick It! started production of stickers and prints of
his artwork.
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