Timothy Smith is a writer and independent researcher based in the Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia, with a background in arts management and the entertainment industry.
His discovery of Renato Fratini's unsigned romance covers in a Sydney charity shop in 2012 sparked what would become thirteen years of obsessive research—tracking down auction records from London to Istanbul, consulting archives in Rome and Sydney, and interviewing Fratini's surviving colleagues and family members. What began as a collector's curiosity became a mission to rescue a forgotten master from obscurity.
The Art of Renato Fratini is the result of that journey: the most comprehensive account of the artist's career, produced in close collaboration with the Fratini Estate, Professor Steve Chibnall, and collectors and scholars of mid-century visual culture worldwide.
This is his first book.
about the author
about the editor
Steve Chibnall is one of the UK's leading film historians and the world's only Professor of British Cinema. He directs De Montfort University's Cinema and Television History (CATH) Research Centre and curates major archives including those of Hammer Films, Jimmy Sangster, Francis Searle, and Roy Ward Baker.
He has authored or edited over ten books on British cinema, contributed numerous scholarly articles and chapters, and regularly appears on television and radio as an expert commentator. He is Visiting Professor at The Cinema Museum in London, co-series editor for Routledge's British Popular Cinema series, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of British Cinema and Television.
His expertise in British film history and commercial cinema culture made him the ideal editor for this groundbreaking study of Renato Fratini's work.
