Reports: Nobel Prize laureate Dario Fo dies at 90

FILE - This undated file photo shows Italian playwright and actor Dario Fo on the stage in a theater in Milan, Italy. According to ANSA news agency Fo died on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016 in Milan at the age of 90. (AP Photo/Massimo Rana, file) (The Associated Press)

prev next

FILE - This Dec. 9, 1997 file photo shows that year's Nobel laureates, including Italy's Dario Fo, literature, back row third from left, posing together at The Swedish Academy in Stockholm, for the traditional picture. According to ANSA news agency Fo died on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016 in Milan at the age of 90. From left in back row; Jens C. Skou, chemistry winner from Denmark, Stanley B. Prusiner medicine, U.S., Italian Dario Fo literature, Steven Chu, U.S., physics and Robert C. Merton and Myron S.Scholes, both Americans and laureates in economics. In front row chemistry prize winner from England, John E Walker, William D. Phillips,U.S., physics and countryman Paul D. Boyer winner in chemistry, and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji laureate in chemistry from France. (AP Photo/Jonas Ekstromer, file) (The Associated Press)

FILE - In this May 9, 2009 file photo Italian Nobel prize winner Dario Fo, right, and his wife Franca Rame applaud during the Italian State RAI TV program "Che Tempo che Fa", in Milan, Italy. According to ANSA news agency Fo died on Thursday, Oct. 13, 2016 in Milan at the age of 90. (AP Photo/Antonio Calanni, File) (The Associated Press)

ROME – Italian news agency ANSA says playwright Dario Fo, whose energetic mocking of Italian political life, social mores and religion won him the Nobel Prize for Literature, has died. He was 90.

Citing hospital officials, ANSA said Fo died Thursday morning in Milan's Sacco hospital. Premier Matteo Renzi said with Fo's death, Italy had lost one of the leading protagonists of Italian culture and civil life.

The author of "Accidental Death of an Anarchist" and more than 70 other plays saw himself as playing the role of the jester, combining raunchy humor and scathing satire. He was admired and reviled in equal measure.

His political activities saw him banned from the United States and censored on Italian television, and his flamboyant artistic antics resulted in repeated arrests.