Gigi Amaldi, which may or may not be her real name, was an artist working in Argentina in the 1940s and 50s. The name is intimately associated with a series of erotic watercolours which were published in the Spanish comic magazine El Vibora in the mid-1980s, and then in the more erotica-oriented Kiss and French Kiss between 2004 and 2006. Apart from the portfolio La Verdadera Historia de la Humanidad (The True History of Humanity) and a handful of similar erotic watercolours, only a couple of paintings signed Gigi Amaldi, both landscapes, are known, and they may not even be by the same person.

All that we know is that Amaldi was an immigrant of Italian origin, and travelled all over Argentina offering to paint portraits of all those who could afford them. Of course, the illustrations of the important people in those small villages were not done merely to keep them fed, but also to establish a reputation as a painter, though that only appears to have partially succeeded, as that reputation rests today on a rather one-track subject matter.

We would like to thank our Russian friend and contributor Yuri for introducing us to the work of this artist and supplying many of the images.