The Italian cartoonist Stefano Mazzotti grew up in Cesena in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy near the northern Adriatic coast, He is largely self-taught as an artist, having first qualified as a surveyor rather than pursuing formal artistic training. He subsequently studied art and art history at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Ravenna.

His first major commission came in 1997 from Edizioni Trentini’s adult magazine Selen, which asked him to produce illustrations. The experience proved a practical introduction to professional deadlines and led him towards erotic comics. Between 1998 and 2003 he produced a series of albums for Selenium, comprising independent short stories. Working initially in pencil and coloured pencil, he developed a detailed figurative style, with his male characters sometimes compared with those of Giovanna Casotto and Luca Tarlazzi. His stories used a variety of settings and locations rather than relying on static backgrounds.

During this period Mazzotti worked entirely with traditional materials, but the arrival of digital tools gradually changed his process. He continued to make his initial drawings by hand, while increasingly completing the colouring and final rendering on the computer. He has emphasised that this change of technique did not alter the quality or expressive character of the finished work.

After 2003 Mazzotti concentrated increasingly on erotic illustration. His work appeared in publications from SQP, where sketches and preliminary drawings were sometimes reproduced alongside finished illustrations. Velvet Love explored lesbian themes with elements of bondage and fetishism, while other projects included tattooed women in Tatz and cowgirls in Giddy Up!.

His comics have continued to appear in France and Italy. Mémoires de Casanova, his first comic strip featuring Giacomo Casanova, was published by Delcourt in 2013. After a period focused primarily on illustration, he returned to comics in 2024 with Trois copines à Milan, published by Dynamite.

Similar artists

Alessandro Biffignandi – Italian illustrator of photorealistic erotic comics.
Silvio Cadelo – Italian-French illustrator of surreal erotic comics.
Giovanna Casotto – Contemporary Italian erotic-comics artist.
Milo Manara – Long-established Italian illustrator whose style shaped the modern erotic-comics idiom.
Giuseppe Manunta – A fellow Selen-era illustrator whose soft watercolour line offers a gentler counterpoint.
Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri – Draughtsman of meticulously rendered Italian fantasy erotica.
Alex Varenne – French illustrator of stylised erotic comics.