Stamatis Polenakis

Stamatis Polenakis (Greek: Σταμάτης Πολενάκης; 1908 – 19 April 1997) was a 20th-century Greek artist. Although best known as a cartoonist, he was also a painter and moreover the creator of the first Greek animated film Il Duce Narrates (1945). Polenakis was born in Athens, Greece, in 1908 into a family that originated from Sifnos. He studied at the Athens School of Fine Arts, and his first illustrations were published in newspapers and magazines by the time he was still undergraduate. During the late 1930s he was already considered a notable cartoonist, and the same period he also worked as a graphic designer. During the Axis Occupation of Greece, Polenakis fled to his home island, Sifnos, where he secretly started sketching cartoons about the Greco–Italian War mocking Benito Mussolini and the Italian forces. After the Liberation of greece and his return to Athens, those sketches were used to create the first ever Greek animated film which was released in 1945 under the title Il Duce N...