Modena, August 31, 2026 – After Francesco Guccini, the longtime friend Guido De Maria, a humorist, screenwriter, and director from Modena, has also passed away. He died this morning at the age of 93. Born in 1932 (December 20), with a steel class and gold medal irony, always ready with a joke, boundless creativity, and explosive vitality. A sad news that comes just two days after the death of the great photographer and color master, Franco Fontana.
Guido De Maria was a designer, advertiser, television author, and director of commercials. He was born in Lama Mocogno and, for professional reasons, settled in Bologna, where he worked as a director and author of commercials for Caroselli, while still maintaining his residence in Modena. Among his collaborators in those years were the designer Bonvi and the singer Francesco Guccini. In 1972, he invented the famous television format “Gulp, fumetti in Tv” and created the comic character Nick Carter, drawn by Bonvi.
The characters
From the imagination of the cartoonist came many characters and TV commercials such as the Brutos and Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia for Cera Grey, Nelsen dishes, Salomone the chubby pirate for Amarena Fabbri, the shirt with a mustache with Maurizio Costanzo for Frarica di Carpi, the Loacker dwarfs.
“I was the author of Nick Carter together with Bonvi (Franco Bonvicini, the father of Sturmtruppen, editor’s note), in the 70s I directed for Rai Gulp! and SuperGulp!, author together with Giancarlo Governi. For SuperGulp I created Giumbolo, animated by Riccardo Berselli, who sang the theme song of comics on TV,” he told Il Carlino in a 2024 interview.
The milestones of the long career
After a long career as a cartoonist for publications such as ‘Epoca’ and ‘Il Candido’ and as a director of commercials, in 1971 he founded Playvision and, together with his friend Bonvi, created the character Nick Carter for the program ‘Gulp! I fumetti in tv’.
From 1977 to 1981, with Giancarlo Governi, he signed the cult show “Supergulp! I fumetti in tv”, which brought characters like Corto Maltese, Lupo Alberto, the Sturmtruppen, and Tex to the small screen, winning millions of viewers. In 1978 he won the award for television directing in the children’s program sector. Author of numerous commercials – from the “shirt with a mustache” with Maurizio Costanzo to the Loacker dwarfs – De Maria also cultivated cabaret with the group ‘Archibusti’, together with Guccini. In the 2000s, he dedicated himself to reviving the character of Nick Carter and ‘Supergulp!’, through exhibitions, books, and DVD collections that reached hundreds of thousands of copies.
