Spanish Illustration

Illustration is one of the most creative branches and is currently in full bloom. The work of illustrators, especially female illustrators, is highly valued today, both professionally and artistically. In the world of publishing houses, where more and more are invested in the concept of illustrated books, the work of female illustrators is particularly prominent, and their imagination encourages and reissues the world of classics and rounds off production of contemporary projects in a special way. When it comes to a Spanish illustration, the most interesting exhibition that I have seen recently was the exhibition of women illustrators, organized by Institute Cervantes www.belgrado.cervantes.es/ The creators of illustration exhibited are recognized both on the national and international level, by the Chilean Luisa Rivera, or Sonia Pulido, Maria Hesse, Helena Pérez García or Lara Lars from Spain. The exhibition is aimed to promote the most creative and most personal works of the selected authors, as well as the exploration of different formats and techniques such as screen printing, collage, ceramics, digital drawing, sculpture and installation. The exhibition ran by Spanish curator Matilda Rodríguez, represents the most creative branches that is currently in full bloom in the world.

A London-based artist, illustrator and author originally from Chile, Luisa Riviera mainly does work in water-based paints and illustrations that appear in books, magazines, newspapers, and art exhibitions, such as Penguin Random House, The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, House Notes, Rebel Girls and Variety Magazine. Then, Sonia Pulido an illustrator living in a seaside village close to Barcelona with published illustrations in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review, Propublica, Obs Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, AD France, El País, El País Semanal, The Boston Globe, Harper’s Baazar Spain, Rockdelux, Marie Claire. Than fantastic María Hesse (Huelva, 1982) an illustrator with a Special Education Teaching degree. She has worked on the preparation of textbooks for the publisher Edelvives, where she also provided illustrations for magazines such as Jot Down, Maasåi Magazine, Fashion & Art, Público, Kireii and Glamour and to include several books, Orgullo y Prejuicio (Alfaguara, 2017) and Frida Kahlo, Una biografía (Lumen, 2016) (Frida Kahlo: An Illustrated Life). The most prominent of her work is published illustrations of David Bowie (Lumen, 2018) (Bowie: An Illustrated Life), an illustrated biography of the musical chameleon, translated into eight languages. Recently, she has been chosen as one of the 100 best illustrators in the world by Taschen. Among the rest, I would also like to mention work of an architect by education and artist by vocation, Galician illustrator Lara Lars. Lars was fascinated by the depiction of women in those 1950s adverts —appearing either as housewives or as Barbarella-type bombshell heroines— but, despite finding them aesthetically appealing. She used a house wife female fatale images to (re) contextualize the image, in order to transform that kind of image into empowered women, strong women image, in the image with their own narrative. Her other interests are flying saucers, papier-mâché monsters, kitsch postcards and Brutalist buildings, where she creates the combination of anachronistic elements that Lara Lars uses in her retro-futuristic prints. For instance, her prints depict female invaders flanked by an army of UFOs, living in futuristic female-centric societies, slightly surreal don’t you think? which adds to their charm. She uses the collage technique to produce illustrations to cover articles in Vanity Fair, and her list of clients includes publishers and brands such as Anagrama, Seix Barral, H&M, Shiseido…