Willy Rizzo arrived at the right moment: the post-war magazines were crying out for pictures, and no one supplied better ones. He covered the Nuremberg trials at seventeen for the illustrated press of the immediate post-war years, then signed the first colour cover of Paris Match in 1949, a portrait of Churchill; Hergé drew on him to create the photographer of the Tintin adventures. Settled in Rome in 1968, he began designing furniture. His stone lists his three lives.
The story
Born Willy Eros Rizzo in Naples in 1928, he was photographing very young and arrived at exactly the right moment: the illustrated press of the post-war years needed pictures, and nobody supplied them better.
He covered the Nuremberg trials at seventeen, for the illustrated papers of the immediate post-war years; when Paris Match was founded in 1949, he signed its first colour cover, a portrait of Churchill.
Hergé took him as the model for Walter Rizotto, the photographer of “Paris-Flash” in “The Castafiore Emerald”: a reporter drawn from a real reporter, and a magazine traced from his own.
Art director of Marie-Claire in 1959, he then changed trades: settled in Rome, he founded a furniture works in 1968 that would employ a hundred and fifty people, and sold it ten years later.
He died on 25 February 2013 and lies in Division 21, chemin Berthollé, first row. The stone lists his three lives: “Artiste, Photographe Designer”.
The grave
A sober stone, listing only trades: “Willy RIZZO, 1928-2013, Artist, Photographer Designer”. Three words for three lives — the reporter of seventeen at Nuremberg, the portraitist of Tout-Paris for Paris Match, and the furniture designer settled in Rome. Nothing there recalls that a Tintin character, the photographer Walter Rizotto, owes him his name.
On site, do not miss
The inscription fits in three words of trade: “Artist, Photographer Designer”. Nothing of Paris Match, nothing of Nuremberg, nothing of the Tintin character who bears his distorted name.
Visitors' questions
Where is Willy Rizzo's grave?
In Division 21, chemin Berthollé, first row, beneath a stone that sums up his trades: “Artiste, Photographe Designer”. The Division is also that of the mime Marcel Marceau. Nothing there recalls Paris Match, where he spent most of his career.
Marcel MarceauWhat did Willy Rizzo photograph?
The Nuremberg trials at seventeen, for the illustrated press of the immediate post-war years; then Churchill, for the first colour cover of Paris Match in 1949, then Picasso, Yves Saint Laurent and the whole of fashionable Paris from the 1950s to the 1970s. He was art director of Marie-Claire in 1959.
NadarIs a Tintin character based on him?
Yes: Walter Rizotto, the photographer in the Tintin adventures, owes his name and his silhouette to Willy Rizzo. Hergé, a reader of the illustrated press, took his reporter from the real ones: Rizzo, who had covered Nuremberg at seventeen, was then photographing fashionable Paris for Paris Match.
Philippe HonoréWas Willy Rizzo a designer as well?
Yes, and it was his second career: settled in Rome from 1968, he designed furniture, some of which entered the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His stone calls him “Photographe Designer”.
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