Love is... name of the famous series of comics, which
has been created by the artist from New Zealand – Kim Casali.
When Kim was 19, she began to travel around the world.
In 1967 (when she was 25 years), she lived in California, where she met an Italian
boy, Roberto Casali. Kim dated him, and sometimes she drew love scenes on
napkins. These napkins she gifted to his future husband Roberto. Such unusual method
of attentions fascinated Roberto and soon they got married.
In 1970 the first black-and-white comics appeared
in Los Angeles Times and had a great popularity. They began publishing comics
on the last page of the newspaper every week.
But Kim had never considered that she is a great artist;
she enjoyed drawing “Love is…” for three years. In one of the magazines there was
an interview, where she said: “If I'd had a choice, I would have become a
writer of romantic songs. Songs about love affected me deeply... I didn't
become a songwriter so I had to express myself in another once the real thing
happened to me.”
In 1975 Kim met a British artist Bill Esprey. In
1978 British newspaper “Mail on Sunday” proposed them to make a special coloured
version of the pictures. They agreed, and after some time Turkish company
Intergum took this series of pictures.
“Love is...” is a Turkish chewing gum with
inserts about love. It is produced as yet. This chewing gum was very popular in
Russia and Ukraine in the end of 80s. Every schoolgirl had a collection of
inserts "Love is...":)
Kim Casali died in 1997, but Bill Esprey continues
drawing new stories for 34 years. By hearsay, he got to know not long ago, that
the chewing gum wrapped up in his pictures.
